Aristotle quotes - page 10

To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute. (Aristotle)
He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature. View quote
Aristotle
One swallow does not make a summer. View quote
Aristotle
In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action. View quote
Aristotle
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. View quote
Aristotle
... happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.... View quote
Aristotle
For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility. View quote
Aristotle
Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age. View quote
Aristotle
The more you know, the more you know you don't know. View quote
Aristotle
This opinion... appears to be ancient... that the one, excess and defect, are the principles of things... It is not... probable that there are more than three principles... [E]ssence is one certain genus of being: so that principles will differ from each other in prior and posterior alone, but not in genus, for in one genus there is always one contrariety, and all contrarieties appear to be referred to one. That there is neither one element, therefore, nor more than two or three, is evident. View quote
Aristotle
The single harmony produced by all the heavenly bodies singing and dancing together springs from one source and ends by achieving one purpose, and has rightly bestowed the name not of "disordered" but of "ordered universe" upon the whole. (Aristotle)
[U]niversal is known according to reason, but that which is particular, according to sense... View quote
Aristotle
[I]t is impossible that each of the elements should be infinite. For that is body which has interval on all sides; and that is infinite which has extension without bound. View quote
Aristotle
That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a disputable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body. View quote
Aristotle
[T]he first philosophers, in investigating the truth and the nature of things, wandered, as if led by ignorance, into a certain... path. Hence, they say that no being is either generated or corrupted, because it is necessary that what is generated should be generated either from being or non-being: but both these are impossible; for neither can being be generated, since it already is; and from nothing, nothing can be generated... And thus... they said that there were not many things, but that being alone had a subsistence. ...the ancient philosophers ...through this ignorance added so much to their want of knowledge, as to fancy that nothing else was generated or had a being; but they subverted all generation. View quote
Aristotle
It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. View quote
Aristotle
[I]t is impossible for motion to subsist without place, and void, and time. View quote
Aristotle
Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being affected. To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the market-place; of when: yesterday, last-year; of being-in-a-position: is-lying, is sitting; of having: has-shoes-on, has-armour-on; of doing: cutting, burning; of being-affected: being-cut, being-burned. View quote
Aristotle
All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. View quote
Aristotle
That which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results. View quote
Aristotle
[A]ll things as subsist from nature appear to contain in themselves a principle of motion and permanency; some according to place, others according to increase and diminuation; and others according to change in quality. (Aristotle)
The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him. View quote
Aristotle
But voice is a certain sound of that which is animated; for nothing inanimate emits a voice; but they are said to emit a voice from similitude, as a pipe, and a lyre, and such other inanimate things, have extension, modulation, and dialect; for thus it appears, because voice, also, has these. View quote
Aristotle
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. View quote
Aristotle
We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses-in short from fewer premisses; for... given that all these are equally well known, where they are fewer knowledge will be more speedily acquired, and that is a desideratum. The argument implied in our contention that demonstration from fewer assumptions is superior may be set out in universal form... View quote
Aristotle