ARISTOTLE QUOTES VIII

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

If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics


Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type--not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: pleasure


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


Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: piety


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

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric


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

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: writing


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


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


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


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


It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speach and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric


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

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric

Tags: opinion


If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: playwriting


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


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


A citizen is a constituent part of a whole or system, which invests him with powers and qualifies him for functions, for which, in his individual capacity, he is totally unfit; and independently of which system, he might subsist indeed as a solitary savage, but could never attain that improved and happy state to which his progressive nature invariably tends.

ARISTOTLE

Politics


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