Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy within the Lyceum and the wider Aristotelian tradition.
Here is A selection of some of Aristotle most famous quotes to help you develop your logical thinking. Aristotle Quotes on love, happiness & life. Quotes on society, education and success by Aristotle.
Aristotle Quotes and Sayings
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.
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.
All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
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.
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.
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
Through discipline comes freedom.
Whatever lies within our power to do lies also within our power not to do.
We must be neither cowardly nor rash but courageous.
Quality is not an act, it is a habit.
The intelligence consists not only in the knowledge but also in the skill to apply the knowledge into practice.
Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.
If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.
The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more.
Think as the wise men think, but talk like the simple people do.
Aristotle Quotes About Friendship
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
A friend to all is a friend to none.
The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.
Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
A friend is a second self.
He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.
The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.
A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence.. makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.
Aristotle Quotes About Happiness
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Happiness is a quality of the soul... not a function of one's material circumstances.
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
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.
Happiness is a state of activity.
Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.
Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves, The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.
Aristotle Quotes About Education
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.
Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.
All men by nature desire to know.
Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
Most Famous Aristotle Quotes
Hope is a waking dream.
No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.
It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
To perceive is to suffer.
Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.
To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.
I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
Nature does nothing uselessly.
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.
The Law is Reason free from Passion.
Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something.
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.
Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.
We make war that we may live in peace.
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
Philosophy can make people sick.
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.
Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Memory is the scribe of the soul.
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.
The soul never thinks without a mental picture.
At the intersection where your gifts, talents, and abilities meet a human need; therein you will discover your purpose.
It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.
If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out.
The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either.
Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.
Man is by nature a political animal.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.
The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing.
Yes the truth is that men's ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.
The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
We become brave by doing brave acts.
Also read: