Quotes from Aristotle

Now each man can give a good judgment upon matters with which he is acquainted, and is in such cases a good judge. In each particular case, therefore, he judges best who has been taught the matter in question, and on all matters he whose education has been universal.

The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.

A participation in rights and advantages forms the bond of political society; an institution prior, in the intention of nature, to the families and individuals from whom it is constituted.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

That which is a common concern is very generally neglected. The energies of man are excited by that which depends on himself alone, and of which he only is to reap the whole profit or glory.

He, therefore, who first collected societies, was the greatest benefactor of mankind.

Whoever, therefore, is unfit to live in a commonwealth, is above or below humanity.

Every political society forms, it is plain, a sort of community or partnership, instituted for the benefit of the partners. Utility is the end and aim of every such institution; and the greatest and most extensive utility is the aim of that great association, comprehending all the rest, and known by the name of a commonwealth.

Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions.

For the roots of plants are analogous to what is called the mouth in an animal, being the organ by which food is admitted.

Reason ... governs like a just and lawful prince, and the little community of man is thus held together and sustained.

Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed. Having passed through many changes, it found its natural form, and there it stopped.

Our statements will be adequate if made with as much clearness as the matter allows.

Man is armed with craft and courage, which, untamed by justice, he will most wickedly pervert, and become at once the most impious and the fiercest of monsters.

Thus, then ... are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation: the medium, the objects, and the manner.

Happiness is a thing which calls for honor rather than for praise.

Be studious to preserve your reputation; if that be once lost, you are like a cancelled writing, of no value, and at best you do but survive your own funeral.

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.

Nor does the argument about the contrary seem to be well urged. It does not follow, they say, because pain is an evil, that pleasure is a good; for the opposite to evil may be not a good, but some other evil, and both evil and good may stand opposed to something which is neither one nor the other.

Bad men are full of repentance.

The precepts of the law may be comprehended under these three points: to live honestly, to hurt no man willfully, and to render every man his due carefully.

In the case of some people, not even if we had the most accurate scientific knowledge, would it be easy to persuade them were we to address them through the medium of that knowledge; for a scientific discourse, it is the privilege of education to appreciate, and it is impossible that this should extend to the multitude.

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.

Novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot.