Aristotle quotes

Contemplation is the highest form of activity.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

A common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.

Aristotle

He who hath many friends hath none.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

Because the female is as it were a deformed male.

Aristotle

Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

Aristotle

We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

Aristotle

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.

Aristotle

Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

Aristotle

There are some jobs in which it is impossible for a man to be virtuous.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

We can do noble acts without ruling the earth and sea.

Aristotle

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Aristotle

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

Aristotle

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

Aristotle

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Aristotle

Nature does nothing uselessly.

Aristotle

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Aristotle

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.

Aristotle

Men are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states, suits about contracts, convictions for perjury, flatteries of rich men and the like, which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, are due to a very different cause—the wickedness of human nature.

Aristotle

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Aristotle

Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.

Aristotle

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

Aristotle

Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

Aristotle

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

No one loves the man whom he fears.

Aristotle