Quotes About Aristotle

The rationalism of Plato and Aristotle is also important because Jews, Christians and Muslims all drew upon their ideas and tried to adapt them to their own religious experience, even though the Greek God was very different from their own.

Aristotle's account of the Katharsis of tragedy was a philosophic presentation of a truth that Homo religiosus had always understood intuitively: a symbolic, mythical or ritual presentation of events that would be unendurable in daily life can redeem and transform them into something pure and even pleasurable.

Unlike Descartes, who had proved the existence of the self, God and the natural world in that order, Newton began with an attempt to explain the physical universe, with God as an essential part of the system. In Newton's physics, nature was entirely passive: God was the sole source of activity. Thus, as in Aristotle, God was simply a continuation of the natural, physical order.

The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, "in truth," was at the bottom of this equality.

To judge therefore of Shakespeare by Aristotle's rule is like trying a man by the Laws of one Country who acted under those of another.

Aristoteles quidem ait: 'Omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse.' Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy.

Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.

In part, art completes what nature cannot elaborate; and in part it imitates nature.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

The new religion without any secrets is philosophy. The old religion, said Aristotle, is necessary only for the uneducated; Confucius, Buddha, Voltaire and Lessing were of the same opinion.

I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy.

Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.

I like Aristotle, but I don't agree with his cosmological argument about god.

Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.

Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abstract reason – that is, reason divorced from experience.

Plato believed in metaphorical realm of pure form.. Aristotle, his pupil, rejected this, insisting that the only reality is that which we consent. We live in the world of things, he thought and each of those things have unique properties that can be defined and categorized and acts predictably according to certain laws.

Aristotle stipulates that "the poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose … The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.

Marx wrote his dissertation on Epicurus, and he was familiar with Greek thought. Aristotle, as you will see, provides a frequent anchor for his arguments.

Nor are the earth, water, and other elements, examined by ARISTOTLE, and HIPPOCRATES, more like to those, which at present lie under our observation, than the men, described by POLYBIUS and TACITUS, are to those, who now govern the world.

Periodic revivals of Plato's and Aristotle's ideas made a great impact on the church and pagan societies in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and on much of today's culture. These ideas have been mass marketed. Many have eaten of these men's fruit, not realizing the roots of what they were taught. The ideas of these men have insidiously clouded the clear understanding of the Bible for many, setting us up to view women as an inferior, subordinate "other".

Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.

Great is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property.