Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Every political society forms, it is plain, a sort of community or partnership, instituted for the benefit of the partners. Utility is the end and aim of every such institution; and the greatest and most extensive utility is the aim of that great association, comprehending all the rest, and known by the name of a commonwealth.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
That which is a common concern is very generally neglected. The energies of man are excited by that which depends on himself alone, and of which he only is to reap the whole profit or glory.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Wealth is clearly not the absolute good of which we are in search, for it is a utility, and only desirable as a means.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
The law itself is accused of iniquity, and impeached, like the orators of Athens when they have persuaded the assembly to pass unjust decrees.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Reason ... governs like a just and lawful prince, and the little community of man is thus held together and sustained.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Man is armed with craft and courage, which, untamed by justice, he will most wickedly pervert, and become at once the most impious and the fiercest of monsters.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Happiness is a thing which calls for honor rather than for praise.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
For the roots of plants are analogous to what is called the mouth in an animal, being the organ by which food is admitted.
ARISTOTLE
On Youth & Old Age, Life & Death
Whoever, therefore, is unfit to live in a commonwealth, is above or below humanity.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Were part of the human race to be arrayed in that splendor of beauty which beams from the statues of gods, universal consent would acknowledge the rest of mankind naturally formed to be their slaves.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
To some writers, nothing appears of so much consequence as the skillful regulation of property; because it is this much coveted object that gives birth to most disputes and most seditions.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
It may then be asked whether there is but one mode of impression for all the senses, seeing that taste and touch are acted upon by contact, and the other senses from a distance? But yet this is a seeming difference only, for we perceive the hard and the soft, as we do the odorous, the sonorous, and the visible, through media; with this difference, that the former impressions are made by objects close to, and the latter by objects at a distance from us. On which account, as we perceive all things through a medium, the medium, in the case of bodies close to us, escapes our attention; but if, as we have already said, we could be sensible of all tangible impressions through a membraneous substance, without our being conscious of their having been so transmitted, we should then be situated as we now are, when in water or air; for so situated, we seem to touch bodies directly, and to have no impression from them through a medium.
ARISTOTLE
On the Vital Principle
In the case of some people, not even if we had the most accurate scientific knowledge, would it be easy to persuade them were we to address them through the medium of that knowledge; for a scientific discourse, it is the privilege of education to appreciate, and it is impossible that this should extend to the multitude.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Bad men are full of repentance.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Tragedy advanced by slow degrees; each new element that showed itself was in turn developed. Having passed through many changes, it found its natural form, and there it stopped.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics