...happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it...
– Aristotle
A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.
– Aristotle
A friend is a second self.
– Aristotle
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
– Aristotle
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
– Aristotle
In the arena of human life the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities.
– Aristotle
It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.
– Aristotle
Law is mind without reason.
– Aristotle
Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.
– Aristotle
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
– Aristotle
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
– Aristotle
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
– Aristotle
To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.
– Aristotle
To perceive is to suffer.
– Aristotle
Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.
– Aristotle
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
– Aristotle
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
– Aristotle
I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
– Aristotle
Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.
– Aristotle
All men by nature desire knowledge.
– Aristotle
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
– Aristotle
It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.
– Aristotle
To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.
– Aristotle
To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.
– Aristotle
We must as second best...take the least of the evils.
– Aristotle
With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.
– Aristotle
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
– Aristotle
A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange...Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.
– Aristotle
Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
– Aristotle
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
– Aristotle
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 the government to the utmost.
– Aristotle
It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.
– Aristotle
Law is order, and good law is good order.
– Aristotle
The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
– Aristotle
They should rule who are able to rule best.
– Aristotle
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
– Aristotle
A whole is that which has beginning, middle and end.
– Aristotle
Evil draws men together.
– Aristotle
It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.
– Aristotle
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
– Aristotle
Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.
– Aristotle
The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.
– Aristotle
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
– Aristotle
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
– Aristotle
Quality is not an act, it is a habit.
– Aristotle
Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.
– Aristotle
Nature does nothing in vain.
– Aristotle
Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.
– Aristotle
It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.
– Aristotle
Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
– Aristotle
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
– Aristotle
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
– Aristotle
He who hath many friends hath none.
– Aristotle
He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.
– Aristotle
Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.
– Aristotle
For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.
– Aristotle
For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
– Aristotle
For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.
– Aristotle
Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
– Aristotle
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
– Aristotle
Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.
– Aristotle
But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.
– Aristotle
A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.