Aristotle and His Profound Quotes

An important personality in his time and also in history, Aristotle left an important heritage in philosophy. When talking about his literary style, Cicero considered it to be "a river of gold".

His writings inspired and still do so to this day although it is believed that around two-thirds of his works have been lost. Therefore what we have to enjoy today is only a third of his work. Be inspired by his ideas!

❑ "First, have a definite, clear practical idea; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end."

❑ "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."

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

❑ "The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."

❑ "Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil."

❑ "The mother of revolution and crime is poverty."

❑ "Teaching is the highest form of understanding."

❑ "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."

❑ "Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well."

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

❑ "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."

❑ "The soul never thinks without a mental picture."

❑ "All virtue is summed up in dealing justly."

❑ "We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace."

❑ "Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own."

❑ "Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope."

❑ "Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient."

❑ "Quality is not an act, it is a habit."

❑ "We are what we repeatedly do."

❑ "Beauty is the gift of God."

❑ "Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity."

❑ "The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain."

❑ "Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions."

❑ "He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger."

❑ "One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day."

❑ "Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons."

❑ "All men desire to know."

❑ "If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost."

❑ "Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government."

❑ "All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth."

❑ "The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection [are] that a thing is your own and that it is your only one."

❑ "Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject who will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit."

❑ "To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character."

❑ "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

❑ "I say that habit's but a long practice, friend, and this becomes men's nature in the end."

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

❑ "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."

❑ "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."

❑ "All men by nature desire knowledge."

❑ "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."

❑ "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."