Aristotle, the towering figure of ancient Greek philosophy, made enduring contributions to a wide array of disciplines, including logic, ethics, metaphysics, politics, and natural sciences. His systematic approach to knowledge laid the foundation for Western thought and continues to influence philosophical inquiry to this day.
"Tis the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
"To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world."
"Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else."
"A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end."
"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts."
"We shall learn the qualities of governments in the same way as we learn the qualities of individuals, since they are revealed in their deliberate acts of choice; and these are determined by the end that inspires them."
"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
"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."
"Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit."
"No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness."
"It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit."
"All terrible things are more terrible if they give us no chance of retrieving a blunder-either no chance at all, or only one that depends on our enemies and not ourselves. Those things are also worse which we cannot, or cannot easily, help. Speaking generally, anything causes us to feel fear that when it happens to, or threatens, others causes us to feel pity."
"Now to exert oneself and work for the sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish. But to amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken for the sake of activity."
"For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize."
"Friends are an aid to the young to guard them from error to the elderly to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action to those in the prime of life to assist them to noble deeds."
"In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels."