Last updated on December 7th, 2019
Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a famous Greek philosopher born in Macedonian city of Satigara in Greece. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Aristotle was the first genuine scientist in history. His writings include – physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy.
Below are top quotes by Aristotle
1. “The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.”
2. “It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.”
3. “In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.”
4. “All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.”
5. “Most people would rather give than get affection.”
6. “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”
7. “To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.”
8. “Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.”
9. “The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.”
10. “The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.”
11. “He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.”
12. “A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.”
13. “Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.”
14. “A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.”
15. “We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.”
16. “We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.”
17. “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand fold.”
18. “For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honour the truth first.”
19. “Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”
20. “Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.”
21. “Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.”
22. “No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.”
23. “Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.”
24. “The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.”
25. “No one loves the man whom he fears.”
26. “Piety requires us to honour truth above our friends.”
27. “Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.”
28. “Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.”
29. “Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.”
30. “I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.”
31. “Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.”
32. “Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.”
33. “We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.”
34. ”The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.”
35. “No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.”
36. “He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.”
37. “Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.”
38. “Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.”
39. “Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.”
40. “Those who educate children well are more to be honoured than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.”
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