Quotes About Aristotle

What a personage says or does reveals a certain moral purpose; and a good element of character, if the purpose so revealed is good. Such goodness is possible in every type of personage, even in a woman. ARISTOTLE: The Art of Poetry. (tr. Ingram Bywater.)

Practical wisdom, Aristotle told us, is the combination of moral will and moral skill.

This motivation was at work in both Christian and non-Christian circles. We know this because ancient authors actually tell us so. For example, a commentator on the writings of Aristotle, a pagan scholar named David, indicated: "If someone is uninfluential and unknown, yet wants his writing to be read, he writes in the name of someone who came before him and was influential, so that through his influence he can get his work accepted.

The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement." —Aristotle, from The Nicomachean Ethics

SOMEONE ONCE TRIED TO SUMMARIZE A PRINCIPLE IN Aristotle's epic work Poetics with these words: "Action is character." Now Aristotle was describing the elements of drama when he wrote his Poetics, so he didn't necessarily mean what I mean here. Still, his basic premise is true: we know what a person's character is by what he does.

Aristotle said all human actions have one or more of seven causes.  Chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Instead of despairing about these differences in moral codes, Aristotle argued that though specific rules, laws and customs differed from place to place, what does not differ is that in all places human beings, by their nature, have a proclivity to make rules, laws and customs. To

Nicomachean Ethics.

Aristotle argued that though specific rules, laws and customs differed from place to place, what does not differ is that in all places human beings, by their nature, have a proclivity to make rules, laws and customs. To put this in modern terms, it seems that all human beings are, by some kind of biological endowment, so ineradicably concerned with morality that we create a structure of laws and rules wherever we are. The idea that human life can be free of moral concerns is a fantasy.

Aristotle observes that eating either too much or too little is troubling to the constitution.

Thomas Aquinas is but Aristotle sainted.

Is it natural to sever low beings from their true and rightful destinies? From their natural-born purpose? To give them a false sense of agency? As if some creatures are not put here in the service of others. As if cows don't exist to be eaten." He turned his glass in his hands. "Nothing is accidental in the works of nature. Do you know who said that? Aristotle. He said, Nothing is accidental, everything is, absolutely, for the sake of something else.

We are political animals, as, not without reason, affirmed Aristotle, who perhaps influenced humanity's thinking more than any other ancient philosopher through his almost 200 treatises, according to reports, of which only 31 have been preserved.

Aristotle might not recognize it, or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

judgment and improve project planning and leadership. Aristotle said that experience is "the fruit of years" and argued that it is the source of what he called "phronesis"—the "practical wisdom" that allows us to see what is good for people and to make it happen, which Aristotle saw as the highest "intellectual virtue."[1] Modern science suggests that he was quite right.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men although he was twice married, it never occured to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

According to Aristotle, "Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame. All animal breeders know how difficult it is to maintain a fine strain. The universe seems to be in a conspiracy to encourage the endless reproduction of peasants and Socialists, but a subtle and mysterious opposition stands eternally against the reproduction of philosophers.

People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.

The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.

She was particularly struck by a remark of Aristotle's, that tragedy was "more philosophic" than history, inasmuch as it concerned itself with what might be, while history was concerned with merely what had been.

Come in, Noaks," said the Duke. "You have been to a lecture?" "Aristotle's Politics," nodded Noaks.

Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.