Top 500 Aristotle Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.”

— Aristotle

452. “With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.”

— Aristotle

453. “Fine friendship requires duration rather than fitful intensity.”

— Aristotle

454. “It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.”

— Aristotle

455. “The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.”

— Aristotle

456. “Virtue makes us aim at the right end, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means.”

— Aristotle

457. “A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state, especially of the highest of all. The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.”

— Aristotle

458. “For good is simple, evil manifold.”

— Aristotle

459. “Happiness seems to require a modicum of external prosperity.”

— Aristotle

460. “But the whole vital process of the earth takes place so gradually and in periods of time which are so immense compared with the length of our life, that these changes are not observed, and before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations perish and are destroyed.”

— Aristotle

461. “The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.”

— Aristotle

462. “Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.”

— Aristotle

463. “Modesty is hardly to be described as a virtue. It is a feeling rather than a disposition. It is a kind of fear of falling into disrepute.”

— Aristotle

464. “The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.”

— Aristotle

465. “We should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful.”

— Aristotle

466. “It makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man, or a bad man defrauded a good man, or whether a good or bad man has committed adultery: the law can look only to the amount of damage done.”

— Aristotle

467. “Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning.”

— Aristotle

468. “Tragedy is an imitation not of men but of a life, an action.”

— Aristotle

469. “All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.”

— Aristotle

470. “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

471. “Of the irrational part of the soul again one division appears to be common to all living things, and of a vegetative nature.”

— Aristotle

472. “No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.”

— Aristotle

473. “A brave man is clear in his discourse, and keeps close to truth.”

— Aristotle

474. “When a draco has eaten much fruit, it seeks the juice of the bitter lettuce; it has been seen to do this.”

— Aristotle

475. “Shipping magnate of the 20th century If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.”

— Aristotle

476. “Only you can take you to Funkytown.”

— Aristotle

477. “Man, as an originator of action, is a union of desire and intellect.”

— Aristotle

478. “Since music has so much to do with the molding of character, it is necessary that we teach it to our children.”

— Aristotle

479. “It has been well said that ‘he who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.’ The two are not the same, but the good citizen ought to be capable of both; he should know how to govern like a freeman, and how to obey like a freeman – these are the virtues of a citizen.”

— Aristotle

480. “The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23.”

— Aristotle

481. “There is always something new coming out of Africa.”

— Aristotle

482. “Philosophy can make people sick.”

— Aristotle

483. “If some animals are good at hunting and others are suitable for hunting, then the Gods must clearly smile on hunting.”

— Aristotle

484. “Now property is part of a household, and the acquisition of property part of household-management; for neither life itself nor the good life is possible without a certain minimum supply of the necessities.”

— Aristotle

485. “What soon grows old? Gratitude.”

— Aristotle

486. “To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.”

— Aristotle

487. “The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.”

— Aristotle

488. “Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious temperament and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile?”

— Aristotle

489. “The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.”

— Aristotle

490. “We ought, so far as it lies within our power, to aspire to immortality, and do all that we can to live in conformity with the highest that is within us; for even if it is small in quantity, in power and preciousness, it far excels all the rest.”

— Aristotle

491. “Being a father is the most rewarding thing a man whose career has plateaued can do.”

— Aristotle

492. “If the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary.”

— Aristotle

493. “Now the greatest external good we should assume to be the thing which we offer as a tribute to the gods, and which is most coveted by men of high station, and is the prize awarded for the noblest deeds; and such a thing is honor, for honor is clearly the greatest of external goods.”

— Aristotle

494. “When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.”

— Aristotle

495. “Man’s best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it.”

— Aristotle

496. “People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life.”

— Aristotle

497. “For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.”

— Aristotle

498. “Between husband and wife friendship seems to exist by nature, for man is naturally disposed to pairing.”

— Aristotle

499. “I say that habit’s but a long practice, friend, and this becomes men’s nature in the end.”

— Aristotle

500. “In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.”

— Aristotle