Quotes About Philosophy

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.

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.

Think as the wise men think, but talk like the simple people do.

existence is to all men a thing to be chosen and loved, and that we exist by virtue of activity (i.e. by living and acting), and that the handiwork is in a sense, the producer in activity; he loves his handiwork, therefore, because he loves existence.

And if a man believes nothing, but believes it equally so and not so, how would his state be different from a vegetable's?

The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of

If there are several virtues the best and most complete or perfect of them will be the happiest one. An excellent human will be a person good at living life, living well and 'beautifully'.

Muchos hombres se abstienen de hacer y, conformándose con sólo tratar las teorías, creen que son filósofos y que por esta vía seran virtuosos. A éstos les ocurre lo mismo que a los enfermos que escuchan con atención al médico, pero que luego no hacen nada de lo que les prescriben.

It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too.

Thus we must advance from generalities to particulars; for it is a whole that is best known to sense-perception, (25) and a generality is a kind of whole, comprehending many things within it, like parts.

Now to investigate whether Being is one and motionless is not a contribution to the science of Nature.

For if Being is just one, and one in the way mentioned, there is a principle no longer, since a principle must be the principle of some thing or things.

We physicists, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion—which is indeed made plain by induction.

For to define the infinite you must use quantity in your formula, but not substance or quality. If then Being is both substance and quantity, it is two, not one: if only substance, it is not infinite and has no magnitude; for to have that it will have to be a quantity. Again, (5) 'one' itself, no less than 'being', is used in many senses, so we must consider in what sense the word is used when it is said that the All is one.

Now we say that (a) the continuous is one or that (b) the indivisible is one, or (c) things are said to be 'one', when their essence is one and the same, as 'liquor' and 'drink'. If (a) their One is one in the sense of continuous, it is many, (10) for the continuous is divisible ad infinitum.

Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholics?

1) an attribute is predicated of some subject, (35) so that the subject to which 'being' is attributed will not be, as it is something different from 'being'. [186b] Something, therefore, which is not will be. Hence 'substance' will not be a predicate of anything else. For the subject cannot be a being, unless 'being' means several things, in such a way that each is something. But ex hypothesi 'being' means only one thing.

Being will not have magnitude, if it is substance. For each of the two parts must be in a different sense.

It is, (10) then, clearly impossible for Being to be one in this sense.

The first set make the underlying body one—either one of the three5 or something else which is denser than fire and rarer than air—then generate everything else from this, (15) and obtain multiplicity by condensation and rarefaction. Now these are contraries, which may be generalized into 'excess and defect'.

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Lastly (4) in each of his infinite bodies there would be already present infinite flesh and blood and brain—having a distinct existence, however, from one another, and no less real than the infinite bodies, and each infinite: which is contrary to reason.