Items with the red CP logo are available in our Cafepress.com store. Click on the logo to view all products (hats, t-shirts, mugs, and other gift items) for that author or quote.

Quotes by Aristotle

Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

View t-shirts and apparel containing Aristotle quotes.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

We are what we repeatedly do.

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

CP The gods too are fond of a joke

Wit is educated insolence.

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.

Education is the best provision for old age.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.

Hope is a waking dream.

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

One swallow does not make a summer.

It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.

We must as second best...take the least of the evils.

To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.

To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

We make war that we may live in peace.

With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Nature does nothing uselessly.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

They should rule who are able to rule best.

A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange...Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

Well begun is half done.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Law is order, and good law is good order.

Evil draws men together.

It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

A whole is that which has beginning, middle and end.

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

To give money is an easy matter and in any man's power. But to decide to whom to give it, and how large and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in everyman's power nor an easy matter.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

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.

To love someone is to identify with them.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

In the arena of human life the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities.

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.

Law is mind without reason.

To perceive is to suffer.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

The Pythagorean ... having been brought up in the study of mathematics, thought that things are numbers ... and that the whole cosmos is a scale and a number.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

A friend is a second self.

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.

The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

Happiness is a state of activity.

One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.

Evil brings men together.

CP The gods too are fond of a joke.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.