Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
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
Kings ought to differ from their subjects, not in kind, but in perfection.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Now ends clearly differ from one another. For, firstly, in some cases the end is an act, while in others it is a material result beyond and besides that act. And, where the action involves any such end beyond itself, this end is of necessity better than is the act by which it is produced.
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
Dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Now there are two ways in which fire outside the body can, as we see, come to an end, namely, exhaustion and extinction. By exhaustion we mean that termination which is produced by the fire itself; by extinction, that which is produced by the contraries of fire.
ARISTOTLE
On Youth & Old Age, Life & Death
Discontents arise not merely from the inequality of possessions, but from the equality of honors. The multitude complain that property is unjustly, because unequally, distributed; men of superior merit or superior pretentions complain that honors are unjustly, if equally, distributed.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Men fancy that because doing wrong is in their own power, therefore to be just is easy. But it is not so: to lie with one's neighbour's wife, and to strike some one near, and the giving with the hand the bribe ... are easy acts, and in men's own power; but to do these things with the particular disposition is neither easy nor in their power.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
Money, or its equivalents, are essential in war as well as in peace.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
By plot, I here mean the arrangement of the incidents.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Nothing can be truly just which is inconsistent with humanity.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The tragedies of most of our modern poets fail in the rendering of character; and of poets in general this is often true.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of creatures; and through imitation he learns his earliest lessons.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
May not we then confidently pronounce that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods? Or should we add, that he must also be destined to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly, because the future is hidden from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly and absolutely final and complete? If this is so, we shall pronounce those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing the good things we have specified to be supremely blessed, though on the human scale of bliss.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
All action presupposes an end.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics