Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
A man who has been well trained will not in any case look for more accuracy than the nature of the matter allows; for to expect exact demonstration from a rhetorician is as absurd as to accept from a mathematician a statement only probable.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Whether government be a good or a bad thing, it is fair that men of equal abilities and virtues should equally share in it; that they should receive the advantage of it as their right, or bear the burden of it as their duty.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
All learning is derived from things previously known.
ARISTOTLE
The Nicomachean Ethics
But the merchant, if faithful to his principles, always employs his money reluctantly for any other purpose than that of augmenting itself.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
What, then, is in each case the chief good? Surely it will be that to which all else that is done is but a means. And this in medicine will be health, and in tactics victory, and in architecture a house, and so forth in other cases.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
We need relaxation because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken for the sake of activity.
ARISTOTLE
The Nicomachean Ethics
Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
In the human constitution, therefore, mind governs matter absolutely and despotically; but reason governs appetite with a far more limited sway.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
It is not to avoid cold or hunger that tyrants cover themselves with blood; and states decree the most illustrious rewards, not to him who catches a thief, but to him who kills an usurper.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The hand or foot, when separated from the body, retains indeed its name, but totally changes its nature, because it is completely divested of its uses and of its powers.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Most of the things about which we make decisions, and into which therefore we inquire, present us with alternative possibilities.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Let us define rhetoric to be: "A faculty of considering all the possible means of persuasion on every subject;" for this is the business of no one of the other arts, each of which is fit enough to inform or persuade respecting its own subject; medicine, for instance, on what conduces to health or sickness; and geometry, on the subject of relations incidental to magnitudes; and arithmetic, on the subject of numbers; and in the same way the remaining arts and sciences. But rhetoric, as I may say, seems able to consider the means of persuasion on any given subject whatsoever. And hence I declare it to have for its province, as an art, no particular limited class of subjects.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic; since both are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to impeach.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
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
Politics
Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement--each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
On a similar principle they consider that to know right and wrong is nothing clever, because what the laws speak about it cannot be hard to understand. But this is not justice, except incidentally: it is when actions are done or awards are made in a certain way that they become just.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
A beautiful object, whether it be a picture of a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but most also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics