Aristotle Quotes 230 Thought-Provoking Insights from History&#39;s Greatest Philosopher

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

Aristotle book Metaphysics

Attributed to Aristotle in Lowell L. Bennion, Religion and the Pursuit of Truth http://books.google.gr/books?id=2HPUAAAAMAAJ&q=, Deseret Book Company, 1959, p. 52, and in American Opinion, Volume 24 http://books.google.gr/books?id=irofAQAAMAAJ&q=, Robert Welch, Inc., 1981, p. 23. Possibly a discombobulation http://publicnoises.blogspot.fi/2009/02/aristotle-and-accuracy.html of the Nicomachean Ethics Book I, 1094b.24 quote above. Disputed Source: Metaphysics

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

“Choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”

The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

“To lead an orchestra, you must turn your back on the crowd”

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

Aristotle Quotes about nature

Aristotle book Parts of Animals

Book I, 645a.16
Parts of Animals

“If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is natures way.”

“Nature does nothing uselessly.”

“Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.”

Book I, 1253a.8
Source: Politics

Aristotle Rhetoric

Book I, 1369a.5
Rhetoric
Variant: All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire
Source: Selected Works

“Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.”

“All men by nature desire knowledge.”

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

Source: On Man in the Universe

Aristotle: Trending quotes

“To perceive is to suffer.”

“All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.”

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Aristotle Quotes

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

“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.”

Variant: A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.
Variant: Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Source: The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, p. 188; also reported in various sources as:
Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
A true friend is one soul in two bodies.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

“Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something”

“The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.”

“Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.”

Book VII, 1335a.27
Politics

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”

“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.”

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

This and many similar quotes with the same general meaning are misattributed to Aristotle as a result of Twitter attribution decay. The original source of the quote remains anonymous. The oldest reference resides in the works of George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903): "Maxims for Revolutionists", where he claims that “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”. However, the related quote, "Those who can, do. Those who understand, teach" likely originates from Lee Shulman in his explanation of Aristotlean views on professional mastery: Source: Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4 - 14. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1175860
Misattributed
Variant: Those who can, do, those who cannot, teach.

“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”

“One swallow does not make a summer,
neither does one fine day;
similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

Source: The Nicomachean Ethics

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”

“Philosophy can make people sick.”

Source: The Philosophy of Aristotle

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

Source: Nicomachean Ethics

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

“Any one can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.”

“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”

Book II, 1109a.27.
Variant translation: 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, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.
As quoted in The Child: At Home and School (1944) by Edith M. Leonard, Lillian E. Miles, and Catherine S. Van der Kar, p. 203
Nicomachean Ethics

“The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.”

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”

“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”

Source: Selected Writings From The Nicomachean Ethics And Politics

“The more you know, the more you know you don't know.”

We consider the quote as suspicious, we have no evidence supporting authorship

“Happiness is a state of activity.”

“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”

Aristotle Eudemian Ethics

Eudemian Ethics, Book VII, 1238a.20
Eudemian Ethics

“We make war that we may live in peace.”

“A friend is a second self.”

“The secret to humor is surprise.”

Variant: A friend to all is a friend to none.

“Through discipline comes freedom.”

“Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are therir own”

“He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.”

“All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world”

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

“We must be neither cowardly nor rash but courageous.”

“Well begun is half done.”

“Happiness depends upon ourselves”

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

An interpretative gloss of Aristotle's position in Nicomachean Ethics book 1 section 9, tacitly inserted by J. A. K. Thomson in his English translation The Ethics of Aristotle (1955). The original Greek at Book I 1099b.29 http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekFeb2011&getid=0&query=Arist.%20Eth.%20Nic.%201099b.25, reads ὁμολογούμενα δὲ ταῦτ’ ἂν εἴη καὶ τοῖς ἐν ἀρχῇ, which W. D. Ross translates fairly literally as [a]nd this will be found to agree with what we said at the outset. Thomson's much freer translation renders the same passage thus: [t]he conclusion that happiness depends upon ourselves is in harmony with what I said in the first of these lectures; the words "that happiness depends upon ourselves" were added by Thomson to clarify what "the conclusion" is, but they do not appear in the original Greek of Aristotle. Rackham's earlier English translation added a similar gloss, but averted confusion by confining it to a footnote. Disputed Variant: Happiness depends upon ourselves Source: See http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/aristotle/nicom1b.htm#I9 for the original Greek and Ross's translation; Thomson's translation can be viewed on Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=9SFrNWmO654C&dq=%22happiness+depends+upon+ourselves%22+aristotle&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22happiness+depends+upon+ourselves%22+. Source: Rackham's translation of this passage is available here http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D9%3Asection%3D8

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

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

Book II, Section VI ( translation http://archive.org/stream/aristotlespolit00aris#page/69/mode/1up by Benjamin Jowett) Politics Context: One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

“There can be no doubt that children should be taught those useful things which are really necessary, but not all things, for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; and to young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them without vulgarizing them.”

Source: Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest PHilosophers (1926), reprinted in Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6], Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VI: Psychology and the Nature of Art: "Artistic creation, says Aristotle, springs from the formative impulse and the craving for emotional expression. Essentially the form of art is an imitation of reality; it holds the mirror up to nature. There is in man a pleasure in imitation, apparently missing in lower animals. Yet the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance; for this, and not the external mannerism and detail, is their reality.

“Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest.”

Book VIII 1337b.5 http://books.google.com/books?id=ZrDWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA245&dq=%22absorb+and+degrade+the+mind%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=c6NaUbatEYWp4AOWp4CoBA&ved=0CHYQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=%22absorb%20and%20degrade%20the%20mind%22&f=false, 1885 edition Politics Context: There can be no doubt that children should be taught those useful things which are really necessary, but not all things, for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; and to young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them without vulgarizing them. And any occupation, art, or science which makes the body, or soul, or mind of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise of virtue is vulgar; wherefore we call those arts vulgar which tend to deform the body, and likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade the mind. There are also some liberal arts quite proper for a freeman to acquire, but only in a certain degree, and if he attend to them too closely, in order to attain perfection in them, the same evil effects will follow.

“Let this serve as an outline of the good; for we must presumably first sketch it roughly, and then later fill in the details.”

Book I, 1258b.4
Politics
Context: Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”

Book I, 1098a-b; §7 as translated by W. D. Ross
Nicomachean Ethics
Context: Let this serve as an outline of the good; for we must presumably first sketch it roughly, and then later fill in the details. But it would seem that any one is capable of carrying on and articulating what has once been well outlined, and that time is a good discoverer or partner in such a work; to which facts the advances of the arts are due; for any one can add what is lacking. And we must also remember what has been said before, and not look for precision in all things alike, but in each class of things such precision as accords with the subject-matter, and so much as is appropriate to the inquiry. For a carpenter and a geometer investigate the right angle in different ways; the former does so in so far as the right angle is useful for his work, while the latter inquires what it is or what sort of thing it is; for he is a spectator of the truth. We must act in the same way, then, in all other matters as well, that our main task may not be subordinated to minor questions. Nor must we demand the cause in all matters alike; it is enough in some cases that the fact be well established, as in the case of the first principles; the fact is the primary thing or first principle. Now of first principles we see some by induction, some by perception, some by a certain habituation, and others too in other ways. But each set of principles we must try to investigate in the natural way, and we must take pains to state them definitely, since they have a great influence on what follows. For the beginning is thought to be more than half of the whole, and many of the questions we ask are cleared up by it.

“I have gained this by philosophy … I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.”

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”

Book II, 1103a.33: Cited in: Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:9
Nicomachean Ethics
Source: The Nicomachean Ethics