ARISTOTLE QUOTES VIII

Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)

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

Tags: government


All learning is derived from things previously known.

ARISTOTLE

The Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: learning


Money ... is founded merely on convention; its currency and value depending on the mutable wills of men.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: money


The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: money, wealth


But the merchant, if faithful to his principles, always employs his money reluctantly for any other purpose than that of augmenting itself.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: money


A family, to be complete, must consist of freemen and slaves; and as every complex object naturally resolves itself into simple elements, we must consider the elements of a family--the master and servant, the husband and wife, the father and children; what all of these are in themselves, and what are the relations which they naturally and properly bear to each other.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: family


Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: birth control


The necessity of perpetuating the species, forms the combining principle between males and females; a principle independent of choice or design, and alike incident to animals and to plants, which are all naturally impelled to propagate their respective kinds.

ARISTOTLE

Politics


It is easy to have some knowledge about honey, wine, and hellebore, of cautery and the use of the knife; but how they should be applied for restoring health, to whom and when, is no less a matter than to be a physician.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: knowledge


For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: pleasure


Concerning things which exist or will exist inevitably, or which cannot possibly exist or take place, no counsel can be given.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric


The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: writing


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

Tags: habit


Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks to amend.

ARISTOTLE

On the Generation of Animals

Tags: nature


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

Tags: revolution


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


Now all orators effect their demonstrative proofs by allegation either of enthymems or examples, and, besides these, in no other way whatever.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric


Wicked men obey for fear, but the good for love.

ARISTOTLE

attributed, Day's Collacon


Most of the things about which we make decisions, and into which therefore we inquire, present us with alternative possibilities.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric

Tags: opinion