Aristotle has discovered and formulated every canon of theoretical consistency, and every artifice of dialectical debate, with an industry and acuteness which cannot be too highly extolled; and his labors in this direction have perhaps contributed more than any other single writer to the intellectual stimulation of after ages
Much of Aristotle’s writings have been lost, unfortunately. What survives were most likely lecture notes as opposed to finished, polished treatises. It appears as though his lost writings were better in almost every way. That is saying a lot, because we do know quite a bit, as it were. But we are definitely sorely missing them: prestigious Roman orator Marcus Tulles Cicero believed: “If Plato’s prose was silver, Aristotle’s was a flowing river of gold.” Here I give you, over one-hundred-fifty examples of the gold: Aristotle quotes.
By the just we mean that which is lawful and that which is fair and equitable.
Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. The answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a person’s own breast. Trust thyself.
That which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man therefore, the life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man.
Still, we must not think that the person who is to be happy will need many things or great things, for self-sufficiency and action do not involve excess, and we can do noble acts without ruling earth and sea.
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
The greatest injustices proceed from those who pursue excess, not by those who are driven by necessity.
The greatest thing, by far, is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned; it is also a sign of genius.
For we choose happiness for itself, and never with a view to anything further; whereas we choose honor, pleasure, intellect…because we believe that through them we shall be made happy.
The search for truth is in one way hard and in another way easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully or miss it wholly.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence but we rather have these because we have acted rightly…
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.
More Aristotle quotes: He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy, and is afraid of solitude.
The citizen will gain less by the change than he will lose by acquiring the habit of disobedience.
In the arena of human life, the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.
We should praise a person who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
Wit is educated insolence.
Our aim is not to know what courage is but to be courageous; not to know what justice is but to be just; in the same way as we want to be healthy rather than to ascertain what health is, and to be in good condition of body rather than to ascertain what good bodily condition is.
They who take only a few points into account find it easy to pronounce judgment.
By law a man is free and another slave. But by nature, there is no difference between them. That’s why such a relationship is not just but, rather, violent.
Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for, in general, faction arises from men’s striving for what is equal.
It is more necessary to equalize appetites than possessions, and that can only be done by adequate education….
What is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.
Between friends there is no need of justice.
Among all willing injustices, most occur out of greed and ambition.
What the judge does is to restore equality.
What a great statesman must be most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens; namely, a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well-off, being in the majority, are in sovereign control of government.
External goods, being like a collection of tools, each useful for some purpose, have a limit: one can have too many of them, and that is bound to be of no benefit, or even a positive injury, to their possessors.
To each man there comes just so much happiness as he has of virtue and of practical wisdom, and performs actions dependent thereon.
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Selfishness is condemned, and justly, but selfishness is not simply to be fond of oneself, but to be excessively fond.
Greatness of spirit [is] to bear finely both good fortune and bad, honor and disgrace, and not to think highly of luxury or attention or power or victories in contests, and to possess a certain depth and magnitude of spirit.
A person’s value doesn’t depend on his qualities but on the way he uses them.
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamity – not through insensitivity, but through greatness of mind.
The components of virtue are justice, courage, self-control, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, practical and speculative wisdom.
The life which is best for men, both as individuals and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, regulated by wisdom.
The wish for friendship develops rapidly, but friendships do not.
It is characteristic of good men neither to do wrong themselves nor to allow their friends to do so.
More Aristotle quotes: Love is the cause of unity in all things.
He is no lover who does not love always.
Pleasures are a hindrance to thinking, and the more enjoyable they are, the greater the hindrance – for example, the pleasure of sex; nobody could do anything against that background.
A polis is not an association for residence on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange. The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
It is the nature of the many to be ruled by fear rather than by shame, and to refrain from evil not because of the disgrace but because of the punishments.
The man who is isolated—who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is already self-sufficient—is no part of the polis, and must therefore be either a beast or a god.
Not pleasure, but freedom from pain, is what the wise man will aim at.
My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
All skill and education aim at filling the gaps that nature leaves.
Poetry tends to give general truths, whereas history gives particular facts.
Matters concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health…The agents themselves must in each case consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation.
The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily spoiled than a little.
If the leader is not wise and just, how can he rule properly?
It is surely a bad thing that the greatest offices…should be bought. The law which permits this abuse makes wealth of more account than ability, and the whole state becomes avaricious.
A state’s purpose is not merely to provide a living, but to make a life that is good.
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.
They who take only a few points into account find it easy to pronounce judgment.
Whoever heard of a man making himself dictator in order to keep warm?
Men readily listen [to Utopias,] and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody’s friend, especially when someone is heard denouncing the evils now existing…which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, arise from quite another source—the wickedness of human nature.
The citizen will gain less by the change than he will lose by acquiring the habit of disobedience.
More Aristotle quotes: He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy, and is afraid of solitude.
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence but we rather have these because we have acted rightly…
For we choose happiness for itself, and never with a view to anything further; whereas we choose honor, pleasure, intellect…because we believe that through them we shall be made happy.
More Aristotle quotes: A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.
The goal of war is peace, of business, leisure.
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
The ultimate value of life depends on awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruits are sweet.
The unfortunate need people who will be kind to them; the prosperous need people to be kind to.
The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.
The person with understanding does not know and judge as one who stands apart and unaffected; but rather, as one united by a specific bond with the other – he thinks with the other and undergoes the situation with him.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
No tyrant need fear ‘till men begin to feel confident in each other.
There are some jobs in which it is impossible for a man to be virtuous.
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, which on the other hand we do not collectively fail. Everyone says something true about the nature of things, while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth. So by the union of all, a considerable amount is amassed.
Melancholy men are of all others the wittiest.
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.
Men’s ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.
Happiness [is] prosperity combined with virtue.
Plato is dear to me, Socrates is dear, but truth is dearer still.
To leave the number of births unrestricted, as is done in most states, inevitably causes poverty among the citizens, and poverty produces faction and crime.
The activity of happiness must occupy an entire lifetime; for one swallow does not a summer make.
Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it.
Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honor than parents, who merely gave them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensures a good life.
Whoever heard of a man making himself a dictator in order to keep warm? For this reason, there is more honor in slaying a tyrant than a thief.
Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements, but in virtuous activities.
It is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue.
More Aristotle quotes: Dignity does not consist of possessing honors, but in deserving them.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than he who overcomes his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.
Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.
The human mind uses two kinds of principles. There are the unquestionable truths of the understanding which are axioms or self-evident truths and there are the truths of perception, truths which we know, which we possess, when we perceive matters of fact, such as, ‘Here is a piece of paper in my hand.’
From good parents comes a good son.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it
If the people are not utterly degraded, then although individually they must be worse judges than those who have special knowledge, as a body they are as good, or better.
Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.
As a feast to which all the guests contribute is better than a banquet furnished by one man, so the multitude is a better judge of most things than any individual.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
A brave man is clear in his discourse, and keeps close to truth.
It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. 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.
The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false; while to say of what is that is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.
Aristotle quotes are available here as well.
