Quotes About Aristotle

A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.

The world is an astonishing place, and the idea that we have in our possession the basic tools needed to understand it is no more credible now than it was in Aristotle's day.

The first and last schoolmaster of life is living and committing oneself unreservedly and dangerously to living; to men who know this an Aristotle and a Plato have much to say; but those who have imposed cautions on themselves and petrified themselves in a system of ideas, them the masters themselves will lead into error

Philosopher John Rawls distilled the sense of Aristotle's discussion into what he labeled the Aristotelian principle, which Rawls stated as follows: Other things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness.

Aristotle formulated the same point in more sober terms when he said that, that which sees becomes colored itself, so to speak, :and that the reality of the perceived and the reality of the perceiving are identical.

The natural striving for knowledge, as Aristotle formulates it at the beginning of the Metaphysics moves in a sphere of universal theoretical brightness and visibility and theoria represents the comprehension (via imaginative reenact- ment) of an absolutely divine act.

Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things.

Aristotle's classic dictum: "A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end." It is true for a whole life, is it not? That realization has been

Aristotle doesn't exist for Nietzsche.

It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia.

In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.

In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.

As they knew, Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.

Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.

they knew, Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability,

for Aristotle contemplation is the highest good that a life can achieve. It is the good he associates with the gods.

What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.  Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out.

By the end of the eleventh century," Edmond said, "the greatest intellectual exploration and discovery on earth was taking place in and around Baghdad. Then, almost overnight, that changed. A brilliant scholar named Hamid al-Ghazali—now considered one of the most influential Muslims in history—wrote a series of persuasive texts questioning the logic of Plato and Aristotle and declaring mathematics to be 'the philosophy of the devil.

Aristotle put it, the rare skill "to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way.

In The Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle's philosophical enquiry into virtue, character, and the good life, his challenge is to manage our emotional life with intelligence. Our passions, when well exercised, have wisdom; they guide our thinking, our values, our survival. But they can easily go awry, and do so all too often. As Aristotle saw, the problem is not with emotionality, but with the appropriateness of emotion and its expression.

enfadarse con la persona adecuada, en el grado exacto, en el momento oportuno, con el propósito justo y del modo correcto, eso, ciertamente, no resulta tan sencillo. Aristóteles, Ética a Nicómaco.

As Aristotle saw, the problem is not with emotionality, but with the appropriateness of emotion and its expression.