Inspiring Quotes by Aristotle
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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.

It is no part of a physician's business to use either persuasion or compulsion upon the patients.

Oh, wretched ephemeral race … why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is--to die soon.

The character which results from wealth is that of a prosperous fool.

Just as at the Olympic games it is not the handsomest or strongest men who are crowned with victory but the successful competitors, so in life it is those who act rightly who carry off all the prizes and rewards.

Such an event is probable in Agathon's sense of the word: 'it is probable,' he says, 'that many things should happen contrary to probability.'

So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it. It is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency.

The student of politics therefore as well as the psychologist must study the nature of the soul.

Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny.

Where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up.

Those who are not angry at the things they should be angry at are thought to be fools, and so are those who are not angry in the right way, at the right time, or with the right persons.

Perhaps here we have a clue to the reason why royal rule used to exist formerly, namely the difficulty of finding enough men of outstanding virtue.

The soul is characterized by these capacities; self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and movement.

Property should be in a general sense common, but as a general rule private... In well-ordered states, although every man has his own property, some things he will place at the disposal of his friends, while of others he shares the use of them.

All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature.

The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own.

If happiness, then, is activity expressing virtue, it is reasonable for it to express the supreme virtue, which will be the virtueof the best thing.

They who are to be judges must also be performers.

It is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny.

The rattle is a toy suited to the infant mind, and education is a rattle or toy for children of larger growth.

Civil confusions often spring from trifles but decide great issues.

The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.

Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn.

The body is at its best between the ages of thirty and thirty-five.

Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold.

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves.

All food must be capable of being digested, and that what produces digestion is warmth; that is why everything that has soul in it possesses warmth.

Courage is the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible.

Goodness is to do good to the deserving and love the good and hate the wicked, and not to be eager to inflict punishment or take vengeance, but to be gracious and kindly and forgiving.

Now, the causes being four, it is the business of the student of nature to know about them all, and if he refers his problems back to all of them, he will assign the why in the way proper to his science-the matter, the form, the mover, that for the sake of which.

And this lies in the nature of things: What people are potentially is revealed in actuality by what they produce.

The actuality of thought is life.

Every man should be responsible to others, nor should any one be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed, there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man.

As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.

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.

And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.

The soul suffers when the body is diseased or traumatized, while the body suffers when the soul is ailing.

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

Marriage is like retiring as a bachelor and getting a sexual pension. You don't have to work for the sex any more, but you only get 65% as much.

It makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man, or a bad man defrauded a good man, or whether a good or bad man has committed adultery: the law can look only to the amount of damage done.

The soul becomes prudent by sitting and being quiet.

A bad man can do a million times more harm than a beast.

A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself ... with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

The continuum is that which is divisible into indivisibles that are infinitely divisible.

Of governments there are said to be only two forms -- democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.

The man who confers a favour would rather not be repaid in the same coin.

Victory is plesant, not only to those who love to conquer, bot to all; for there is produced an idea of superiority, which all with more or less eagerness desire.

Men become richer not only by increasing their existing wealth but also by decreasing their expenditure.

The true friend of the people should see that they be not too poor, for extreme poverty lowers the character of the democracy.

The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties. This exercise must occupy a complete lifetime. One swallow does make a spring, nor does one fine day. Excellence is a habit, not an event.

It will contribute towards one's object, who wishes to acquire a facility in the gaining of knowledge, to doubt judiciously.

Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for in general faction arises from men's striving for what is equal.

The greatest threat to the state is not faction but distraction.

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

All flatterers are mercenary, and all low-minded men are flatterers.

A good character carries with it the highest power of causing a thing to be believed.

In the perfect state the good man is absolutely the same as the good citizen; whereas in other states the good citizen is only good relatively to his own form of government.

Those whose days are consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolties of fashion, unobservant of nature's lovelinessof demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie.

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

The angry man wishes the object of his anger to suffer in return; hatred wishes its object not to exist.

The best things are placed between extremes.

A body in motion can maintain this motion only if it remains in contact with a mover.

People become house builders through building houses, harp players through playing the harp. We grow to be just by doing things which are just.

Life is full of chances and changes, and the most prosperous of men may in the evening of his days meet with great misfortunes.

Happiness is self-connectedness.

If you see a man approaching with the obvious intent of doing you good, run for your life.

Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.

There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.

The appropriate age for marrige is around eighteen and thirty-seven for man.

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

You are what you repeatedly do.

God and nature create nothing that does not fulfill a purpose.

When the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name -- a constitution.

Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.

A period may be defined as a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance.