Quotes from Aristotle

Confidence is characteristic of a person of hope

Aristotle insists that habituation, not teaching, is the route to moral virtue (II. 1). We must practise doing good actions, not just read about virtue.

Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. … They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it. Rhetoric, fourth century BCE (BC)

It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens: upon the same principle, if it is advantageous to place the supreme power in some particular persons, they should be appointed to be only guardians, and the servants of the laws.

But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward;

Who, however, is in doubt 'and' awe (thaumázein) about a matter doesn't believe in the thing to begin with. That is why the friend of Stories (mÅ·thos) is also in a certain way a philosopher; because the Story arises out of awe.' (Aristotle's Metaphysics: Book I. Part II)

Teachers should be more honored than parents, for whereas parents give their children life, teachers give their children a good life

If, then, 'substance' is not attributed to anything, but other things are attributed to it, how does 'substance' mean what is rather than what is not?

They are the ones who are responsible for the fact that decrees and not laws are authoritative, by referring everything to the populace. They end up becoming powerful by having the populace be in authority over everything, while they themselves have authority over the opinion of the populace, since the multitude is persuaded by them. Also

The second set assert that the contrarieties are contained in the one and emerge from it by segregation, (20) for example Anaximander and also all those who assert that 'what is' is one and many, like Empedocles and Anaxagoras; for they too produce other things from their mixture by segregation. These differ, however, from each other in that the former imagines a cycle of such changes, the latter a single series.

No one loves the man whom he fears

Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

Yet ambition and avarice, almost more than any other passions, are the motives of crime.

No debemos, a pesar de no ser más que hombres, limitarnos, como quieren algunos, a los conocimientos y sentimientos puramente humanos: ni reducirnos, mortales como somos, a una condición mortal; es preciso, por lo contrario, que en cuanto de nosotros dependa nos desatemos de los lazos de la condición mortal, y hagamos lo posible por vivir conforme a lo mejor que hay en nosotros.

For who can admit the fault imputed to Homer by Protagoras, — that in the words, 'Sing, goddess, of the wrath,' he gives a command under the idea that he utters a prayer? For to tell some one to do a thing or not to do it is, he says, a command.

El filósofo no pretende aparecer si no tal cual es, busca la verdad con el solo fin de conocer sin mira alguna de interés personal; su vida es un sacrificio perpetuo en honor a la ciencia.

With a view to action experience seems in no respect inferior to art, and we even see men of experience succeeding more than those who have theory without [15] experience. The reason is that experience is knowledge of individuals, art of universals, and actions and productions are all concerned with the individual...

For the laughable is a sort of error and ugliness that is not painful and destructive, just as, evidently, a laughable mask is something ugly and distorted without pain.

Evening may therefore be called 'the old age of the day,' and old age, 'the evening of life,' or, in the phrase of Empedocles, 'life's setting sun.

When Simonides was discussing wisdom and riches with Hieron's wife, and she asked him which was better, to become wise or to become wealthy, he replied, 'To become wealthy. For I see the wise sitting on the doorsteps of the rich.

The student of politics must study the soul.

Whatever creates or increases happiness or some part of happiness, we ought to do; whatever destroys or hampers happiness, or gives rise to its opposite, we ought not to do.

Fourth, it would make no sense for an inability to defend oneself by physical means to be a source of shame, while an inability to defend oneself by verbal means was not, since the use of words is more specifically human than the use of the body.

The proud man, then, is an extreme in respect of the greatness of his claims, but a mean in respect of the rightness of them; for he claims what is accordance with his merits, while the others go to excess or fall short.