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160 Most Important Aristotle Quotes

Aristotle was a prestigious Greek philosopher, educator, and scientist. He was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, a Greek seaport in the region of Macedonia. Aristotle became inspired by Plato and was Plato’s pupil. Both philosophers respected each other. The influence of Plato on Aristotle can be seen in the latter’s early work.

However, despite being inspired by Plato, Aristotle had a different way of viewing the world. Aristotle was concerned with how philosophy can be applied to subjects like the arts, logic, science, and writing. To many Aristotle is seen as the reason why things are what they are in present day.

Aristotle is credited with the invention of Western Philosophy and Civilization. To many the world would not be same had Aristotle not created the three categories of Knowledge: Ethics, Natural history and Metaphysics.

Our collection of Aristotle Quotes will give you an idea how he approached the various issues and topics of Civilization: From his thoughts about government, his ideal of middle class and his view on Life and thw world.

Top Collection of Aristotle Quotes

 

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

Aristotle

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

Aristotle

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Aristotle

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

Aristotle

The gods too are fond of a joke.

Aristotle

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

Aristotle
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

Aristotle

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

Aristotle
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Aristotle

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

Aristotle

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Aristotle

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

Aristotle

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

Aristotle

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Aristotle

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Aristotle

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

Aristotle

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Aristotle

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Aristotle
The aim of art is to represent not the outward

Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

Aristotle

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Aristotle

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Aristotle

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Aristotle

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

Aristotle

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

Aristotle

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Aristotle

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

Aristotle

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

Aristotle

We make war that we may live in peace.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

We praise a man 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.

Aristotle

Well begun is half done.

Aristotle

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

Aristotle

Wit is educated insolence.

Aristotle

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Aristotle

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

Aristotle
Aristotle quote on You will never do anything in this world without courage

Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

Aristotle

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

Aristotle

No one loves the man whom he fears.

Aristotle

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Aristotle

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Aristotle

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Aristotle

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Aristotle

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Aristotle

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

Aristotle

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

Aristotle

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

Aristotle

The secret to humor is surprise.

Aristotle

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Aristotle

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

Aristotle

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Aristotle

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Aristotle

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

Aristotle

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Aristotle

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Aristotle

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Aristotle

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

Aristotle

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

Aristotle

Education is the best provision for old age.

Aristotle

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Aristotle

A friend to all is a friend to none.

Aristotle

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Aristotle

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

Aristotle

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

Aristotle

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

Aristotle

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

Aristotle

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

Aristotle

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Aristotle

Friendship is essentially a partnership.

Aristotle

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Aristotle

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Aristotle

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

Aristotle

He who hath many friends hath none.

Aristotle

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

Aristotle

Bad men are full of repentance.

Aristotle

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Aristotle
t his best, man is the noblest of all animals

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

Aristotle

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Aristotle

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Aristotle

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

Aristotle

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Aristotle

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Aristotle

A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

Aristotle

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.

Aristotle

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Aristotle

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

Aristotle

Change in all things is sweet.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Aristotle

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

Aristotle

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

Aristotle

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

Aristotle

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

Aristotle

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.

Aristotle

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

Aristotle

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Aristotle

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

Aristotle

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

Aristotle

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Aristotle

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

Aristotle

My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

Aristotle

Nature does nothing in vain.

Aristotle

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Aristotle

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

Aristotle

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

Aristotle

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.

Aristotle

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

Aristotle

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Aristotle
He who is unable to live in society - aristotle quote

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Aristotle

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Aristotle

Hope is a waking dream.

Aristotle

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

Aristotle

It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

Aristotle

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Aristotle

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Aristotle

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

Aristotle

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

Aristotle

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

Aristotle

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

Aristotle

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Aristotle

Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.

Aristotle

All men by nature desire to know.

Aristotle

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.

Aristotle

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

Aristotle

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Aristotle
f happiness is activity in accordance with excellence

happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it

Aristotle

Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can become unhappy, for he will never do those things which are hateful and petty

Aristotle

It is easy to fly into a passion–anybody can do that–but to be angry with the right person and at the right time and with the right object and in the right way–that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it.

Aristotle

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

Aristotle

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Aristotle

The best way to teach morality is to make it a habit with children.

Aristotle

Law is mind without reason.

Aristotle

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Aristotle

Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.

Aristotle

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Aristotle

The intention makes the crime.

Aristotle

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

Aristotle