Quotes from Aristotle

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.

The reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, "Ah, that is he." For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the coloring, or some such other cause.

A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

As our acts vary, our habits will follow in their course.

Rhetoric is useful because things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites, so that if the decisions of judges are not what they ought to be, the defeat must be due to the speakers themselves, and they must be blamed accordingly.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire.

Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are in their nature stronger than their opposites; so that if decisions be made, not in conformity to the rule of propriety, it must have been that they have been got the better of through fault of the advocates themselves: and this is deserving reprehension.

Justice is the fundamental virtue of political society, since the order of society cannot be maintained without law, and laws are instituted to declare what is just.

Purpose ... is held to be most closely connected with virtue, and to be a better token of our character than are even our acts.

For it is not true, as some treatise-mongers lay down in their systems, of the probity of the speaker, that it contributes nothing to persuasion; but moral character nearly, I may say, carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in making credible.

Persuasion is effected through the medium of the hearers, when they shall have been brought to a state of excitement under the influence of speech; for we do not, when influenced by pain or joy, or partiality or dislike, award our decisions in the same way; about which means of persuasion alone, I declare that the system-mongers of the present day busy themselves.

Of means of persuading by speaking there are three species: some consist in the character of the speaker; others in the disposing the hearer a certain way; others in the thing itself which is said, by reason of its proving, or appearing to prove the point.

Superiority in war ... cannot surely be a proof of justice, since wars are often unjustly undertaken, and successfully, though wickedly, carried on and concluded.

The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.

In the work of government, reason is the architect; it is the part of reason to command, and the duty of weakness and of passion to obey.

Perfected by the offices and duties of social life, man is the best, but, rude and undisciplined, he is the very worst of animals.

Moral virtue is ... a mean between two vices, that of excess and that of defect, and ... it is no small task to hit the mean in each case, as it is not, for example, any chance comer, but only the geometer, who can find the center of a given circle.

As a drop of honey is dissipated and lost in a pail of water, so the sweet affection of love would totally vanish through too extensive a diffusion.

Magistrates rule by an established rotation; kings reign for life.

Probable impossibilities are always to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character.

The equalization of fortunes may have some slight tendency to stifle animosity and to prevent dissension. But its effect is always inconsiderable, and often doubtful; since those who think themselves entitled to superiority will not patiently brook equality.

It is found by experience, that those instruments are the most perfect, which are each of them contrived for its specific use.