Quotes About Aristotle

Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers.

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

Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances.

Happiness belongs to the self sufficient.

Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.

Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.

Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief.

Aristotle was convinced that a trained memory helped the development of logical thought processes.

the fundamental maxim of Artistotle, that true virtue is placed at an equal distance between the opposite vices.

subdue the wild beast, which, according to the lively metaphor of Aristotle, [48] seldom fails to ascend the throne of a despot.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way.

depends on the principle formulated by Aristotle and often recalled by St. Thomas: "The terms of language are the signs of our ideas, and our ideas are the similitude of realities.

Aristotle urged people to seek "the golden mean" between extremes, "moderation in all things" (which we interpret as including moderation in the pursuit of moderation). But why should this golden mean in general be desirable? Clyde Coombs and George Avrunin (1977) have enunciated a very simple principle that implies moderation: "Good things satiate and bad things escalate.

And even though we have read all the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, we shall never become philosophers if we are unable to make a sound judgement on matters which come up for discussion; in this case what we would seem to have learnt would not be science but history.

Los orígenes del método están, según nos cuenta Descartes ( Discurso), en la lógica, el análisis geométrico y el álgebra. Conviene ante todo insistir en que el gravísimo defecto de la lógica de Aristóteles es, para Descartes, su incapacidad de invención.

Nevertheless, these undeniable points of likeness, which suggest as at least a probable hypothesis that Aristotle may have possessed some knowledge of Nyaya , must not cause us to forget that there are essential differences between the two viewpoints ; for whereas the Greek syllogism, when all is said and done, bears only on the concepts or notions of things, the Hindu argument has a more direct bearing on things in themselves.

Aristotle got tired of hearing lousy arguments in the marketplace and the assembly. So he decided to develop reasoning templates to apply to arguments in order to analyze them for validity.

They all spoke some German, having been living in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. Lenin himself spoke it well. He was a remarkable linguist, Walter learned. He was fluent in French, spoke passable English, and read Aristotle in ancient Greek. Lenin's idea of relaxation was to sit down with a foreign-language dictionary for an hour or two.

If, therefore, there is any one superior in virtue and in the power of performing the best actions, him we ought to follow and obey, but he must have the capacity for action as well as virtue.

When Aristotle said that poetry is superior to history because history only tells us "what Alcibiades did or had done to him," he had in mind history as the mere compilation of facts. To matter, history has to do more. It has to reconnect people, in time, to what Aristotle called the "timeless forms" of nature.

The highest type of intelligence, says Aristotle, manifests itself in an ability to see connections where no one has seen them before, that is, to think analogically.

The person who lived an entirely private life, Aristotle said, was either a beast or a god.

Aristotle himself said that to get someone to take an action you need to build desire.