Aristotle Quotes
More Aristotle Quotes
Although Aristotle may have been right to claim that a desire to know is part of the fundamental constitution of human nature, ... Nietzsche is also correct to emphasize that the impulse to evaluate our surroundings, our fellows, and ourselves is at least as deeply rooted in our human nature as is any natural “desire to know.” “Der Mensch ist ein abschätzendes Tier.”
raymond geuss— pp. 38-39 (Philosophy and Real Politics (2008))
He used to say that personal beauty was a better introduction than any letter; 18 but others say that it was Diogenes who gave this description of it, while Aristotle called beauty "the gift of God"; that Socrates called it "a short-lived tyranny"; Theophrastus , "a silent deceit"; Theocritus , "an ivory mischief"; Carneades , "a sovereignty which stood in need of no guards".
diogenes laërtius— The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics, Aristotle, 9.
He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do; and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.
Roger Ascham— 1545 Toxophilus,'To all Gentlemen andYeomen of England'.
From Aristophanes to Aristotle, the attack on the demagogues always falls back on the one central question: in whose interest does the the leader lead?
moses i. finley— Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 43
I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to.
william stanley jevons— Chapter VIII : Concluding Remarks, The Noxious Influence of Authority, p. 221
I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.
jack kevorkian— Quoted in "Years of Minutes"? - Page 332 - by Andy Rooney - 2004
Aristotle Onassis rescued me at a moment when my life was engulfed with shadows. He brought me into a world where one could find both happiness and love. We lived through many beautiful experiences together which cannot be forgotten, and for which I will be eternally grateful.
jacqueline kennedy onassis— Statement at the funeral of Aristotle Onassis, as quoted in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis : A Life (2000) by Donald Spoto
When it is known that Plato put his own words in Socrates' mouth (Aristotle says this) there should be no reason to doubt that he could have put his own words into other mouths too.
— Ch. 29 (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974))
Aristotle laid the foundation of the distinction between use-value and exchange-value, which has remained a part of economic thought to the present day.
roll, eric, baron roll of ipsden— Chapter I, The Beginnings, p. 34-35
So, then, there abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus, and Coleridge.
george saintsbury— Vol. 3, pg. 231
Most impediments to scientific understanding are conceptual locks, not factual lacks. Most difficult to dislodge are those biases that escape our scrutiny because they seem so obviously, even ineluctably, just. We know ourselves best and tend to view other creatures as mirrors of our own constitution and social arrangements. ( Aristotle , and nearly two millennia of successors, designated the large bee that leads the swarm as a king.)
stephen jay gould— "Glow, Big Glowworm", p. 256
It is suggested that all written works, including this one, have dangerous implications to the vitality of an oral tradition and to the health of a civilization, particularly if they thwart the interest of a people in culture, and following Aristotle , the cathartic effects of culture. "It is written but I say unto you" is a powerful directive to Western civilization.
harold innis— From the 2007 Voyageur Classics edition, pp. 19-20.
Plato says, "'T is to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of folly."
Michel de Montaigne— Book II, ch. 2. Of Drunkenness
The relationship of point to line bothered the Greeks and led Aristotle to separate the two. Though he admits points are on lines, he says that a line is not made up of points and that the continuous cannot be made up of the discrete. This distinction contributed also to the presumed need for separating number from geometry, since to the Greeks numbers were discrete and geometry dealt with continuous magnitudes.
— Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Oxford University Press, 1972
Aristotle had considered the question of whether space is infinite and gave six nonmathematical arguments to prove that it is finite; he foresaw that this question would be troublesome.
— Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Oxford University Press, 1972
Where Plato and Aristotle had asked the question, What is man?, St. Augustine (in the Confessions ) asks, Who am I? and this shift is decisive.
— Chapter Five, Christian sources, p. 84
Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.
will cuppy— Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, 1950
Aristotle was once asked what those who tell lies gain by it. Said he, "That when they speak truth they are not believed."
— Aristotle, 9.
He who is ignorant of Motion, says Aristotle , is necessarily ignorant of all natural things. ...Not only was he entirely in the dark respecting the Laws, he was completely wrong in his conception of the nature of Motion. ...He thought that every body in motion naturally tends to rest.
george henry lewes— George Henry Lewes, Aristotle: a Chapter from the History of Science (1864)
The atomists , unlike Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.
bertrand russell— Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
Clearly, teleology has much in common with the design hypothesis. Both Aristotle and William Paley would say that the gods knew that they wanted you to see, so they designed eyes.
— Brian L. Silver, The Ascent of Science Ch.26, "Life: The Molecular Battle" (1998)
Roger Bacon expressed a feeling which afterwards moved many minds, when he said that if he had the power he would burn all the works of the Stagirite, since the study of them was not simply loss of time, but multiplication of ignorance. Yet in spite of this outbreak every page is studded with citations from Aristotle, of whom he everywhere speaks in the highest admiration.
george henry lewes— George Henry Lewes, Aristotle: a Chapter from the History of Science (1864)
Aristotle forever, but Truth even for longer than that.
— Francis Lieber, in a letter to S. A. Allibone, New York, May, 1857, in The Life And Letters of Francis Lieber (1882), p. 295
Aristotle, that histrionic mountebank, who from behind a Greek mask has so long bewitched the Church of Christ, that most cunning juggler of souls, who, if he had not been accredited as human blood and bone, we should have been justified in maintaining to be the veritable devil.
— Martin Luther, in a letter to John Stuart Blackie, 1516. In Four Phases of Morals (1871)
When I saw that Moses’ version of the Genesis of the world did not fit sufficiently in many ways with Aristotle and the rest of the philosophers, I began to have doubts about the truth of all philosophers and started to investigate the secrets of nature.
— Gerardus Mercator, Evangelicæ Historiæ: Quadripartita Monas Sive Harmonia Quatuor Evangelistarum ("Harmonization of the Gospels") (1592), dedicatory letter. Quoted in Jean Van Raemdonck, Gerard Mercator: sa vie et ses oeuvres (1869), p. 25, footnote 2
[Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato.... He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato] said, " Aristotle has kicked us off, just as chickens do their mother after they have been hatched."
— ’’The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers’’, Book V, "Life of Aristotle" paragraphs II and IV, as translated by C. D. Yonge
Plato is the essential Buddha -seeker who appears again and again in each generation, moving onward and upward toward the "one." Aristotle is the eternal motorcycle mechanic who prefers the "many."
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
