Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
Wickedness is nourished by lust.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
All learning is derived from things previously known.
ARISTOTLE
The Nicomachean Ethics
Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Whether government be a good or a bad thing, it is fair that men of equal abilities and virtues should equally share in it; that they should receive the advantage of it as their right, or bear the burden of it as their duty.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The law is reason unaffected by desire.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Irrational passions would seem to be as much a part of human nature as is reason.
ARISTOTLE
Nichomachean Ethics
Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
It is easy to have some knowledge about honey, wine, and hellebore, of cautery and the use of the knife; but how they should be applied for restoring health, to whom and when, is no less a matter than to be a physician.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speach and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Most of the things about which we make decisions, and into which therefore we inquire, present us with alternative possibilities.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Now all orators effect their demonstrative proofs by allegation either of enthymems or examples, and, besides these, in no other way whatever.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Money ... is founded merely on convention; its currency and value depending on the mutable wills of men.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement--each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime.
ARISTOTLE
Politics