Aristotle quotes and words of wisdom

"Wit is educated insolence."
Found in the topic Wit.

"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
Found in the topic Epigrams.

"The gods, too, are fond of a joke."
Found in the topic God.

"We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us."
Found in the topic Friendship.

"Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age."
Found in the topic Youth.

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
Found in the topic Art.

"A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments."
Found in the topic Democracy.

"Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing."
Found in the topic Unsorted.

"It is better to rise from life as from a banquet -- neither thirsty nor drunken."
Found in the topic Moderation.

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies."
Found in the topic Self.

"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do."
Found in the topic Love.

"The whole is more than the sum of its parts."
Found in the topic All.

"Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them."
Found in the topic Dignity.

"Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come."
Found in the topic Pleasure.

"He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger."
Found in the topic Anger.

"You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions."
Found in the topic Action.

"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."
Found in the topic Education.

"The quality of life is determined by its activities."
Found in the topic Life.

"Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference."
Found in the topic Beauty.

"There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man."
Found in the topic Fool.

Interesting Quotes

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought---particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.Woody Allen - US movie actor, comedian, & director (1935 - )

There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third.Timothy Leary - US psychologist & promoter of mind-altering drugs (1920 - 1996)

  

Who is Aristotle?

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE. at Stagirus, a Greek colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace. His father Nichomachus was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia, and from this began Aristotle's long association with the Macedonian Court, which considerably influenced his life.

Aristotle represents for most of us an icon of difficult or abstruse philosophical thinking; to know Aristotle often provokes hushed whispers even from highly educated people. For all this reputation, though, Aristotle is actually quite an easy read, for the man thought with an incredible clarity and wrote with a superhuman precision. It really is not possible to talk about Western culture (or modern, global culture) without coming to terms with this often difficult and often inspiring philosopher who didn't get along with his famous teacher, Plato, and, in fact, didn't get along with just about everybody (no-one likes a know-it-all). We can say without exaggeration that we live in an Aristotelean world; wherever you see modern, Western science dominating a culture in any meaningful way (which is just about everywhere), Aristotle is there in some form.

Aristotle's conception of logic was the dominant form of logic up until the advances in mathematical logic in the 19th century. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic had arrived at a complete account of the core of deductive inference. Aristotle believed that being moderate in one’s desires lead to happiness because it allowed a person to avoid the extreme ends of the emotional spectrum. He describes a middle region between an excess of character and a deficiency of character. Neither one of those attitudes is to be desired, but courage (the mean of the two) is a very honorable characteristic to have.