Quotes About Aristotle

Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas.

Aristotle spoke of the goal or end, the telos, of human moral behavior. We are on a journey toward that point, which he called EObaiµovia. That has normally been translated as "happiness"; but the meaning Aristotle had in mind was not the one that word often suggests in today's Western world (the feeling of contentment or pleasurable excitement) but the more organic one of becoming our full and true selves, discovering in practice the best and highest activity of which humans are capable.

But no moral philosopher, from Aristotle to Aquinas, to John Locke and Adam Smith, divorced economics from a set of moral ends or held the production of wealth to be an end in itself; rather it was seen as a means to the realization of virtue, a means of leading a civilized life.

The Greek physicians Herophilus and Erasistratus discovered the nervous system in 322 BC, placing the seat of thought in the brain. It might be fair to say that they were the first neuroscientists. Previously, Aristotle and others thought the brain's function was simply to cool the blood, due to it's many folds and creases.

I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.

Thomistic synthesis.

Even in ancient times general recognition must have been accorded to the view which later in the shape of the maxim pecunia pecuniam parere non potest was to be the basis of all discussion of the problem of interest for hundreds and even thousands of years, and Aristotle undoubtedly did not state it in the famous passage in his Politics as a new doctrine but as a generally-accepted commonplace.2

During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed what grew to be a close friendship and association in several business ventures.

[this element], the seat of the appetites and of desire in general, does in a sense participate in principle, as being amenable and obedient to it

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

Of mankind in general, the parts are greater than the whole.

In fact, there is nothing just or fair about it. Aristotle says that justice is equality but not for everyone, only for those who are equal.9 What Aristotle means is that justice is giving people their due. Obama, however, inverts this Aristotelian principle. Obama's position is that justice requires that the unequal be treated as though they were equal. This is the progressive definition of "fairness.

Plato and Aristotle.....survived to become the twin pillars of philosophic and scientific thinking in the Western world, supporting the massive edifice of Christianity. Plato's Theory of Forms, with it's inherent contempt for the physical world, and Aristotle's biological dualism, in which females were seen as failed males, provided the intellectual apparatus for the centuries of misogyny that were to follow.

While the world lasts, will Aristotle's doctrine on these matters last, for he is the oracle of nature and of truth. While we are men, we cannot help, to a great extent, being Aristotelians, for the great Master does but analyze the thoughts, feelings, views, and opinions of human kind.

Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.

Modesty is hardly to be described as a virtue. It is a feeling rather than a disposition. It is a kind of fear of falling into disrepute.

And what shall I tell you, lady, of the natural secrets I have discovered while cooking? And I often say, when observing these details: had Aristotle prepared victuals, he would have written more.

Fine friendship requires duration rather than fitful intensity.

Aristotele credeva che la regina non fosse una femmina ma un maschio, e dunque un re, e che le operaie si sviluppassero a partire da una sostanza progenitrice che gli adulti raccoglievano dai fiori e non da uova deposte dalla regina.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. —ARISTOTLE

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.

The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.

What was Aristotle's life?' Well, the answer lay in a single sentence: 'He was born, he thought, he died.' And all the rest is pure anecdote.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.