Top 500 Aristotle Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgment.”

— Aristotle

352. “Suppose, then, that all men were sick or deranged, save one or two of them who were healthy and of right mind. It would then be the latter two who would be thought to be sick and deranged and the former not!”

— Aristotle

353. “The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.”

— Aristotle

354. “All proofs rest on premises.”

— Aristotle

355. “Today, see if you can stretch your heart and expand your love so that it touches not only those to whom you can give it easily, but also to those who need it so much.”

— Aristotle

356. “But nature flies from the infinite; for the infinite is imperfect, and nature always seeks an end.”

— Aristotle

357. “All food must be capable of being digested, and that what produces digestion is warmth; that is why everything that has soul in it possesses warmth.”

— Aristotle

358. “Selfishness doesn’t consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love.”

— Aristotle

359. “Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.”

— Aristotle

360. “Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.”

— Aristotle

361. “All that we do is done with an eye to something else.”

— Aristotle

362. “People never know each other until they have eaten a certain amount of salt together.”

— Aristotle

363. “Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.”

— Aristotle

364. “It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.”

— Aristotle

365. “The activity of God, which is transcendent in blessedness, is the activity of contemplation; and therefore among human activities that which is most akin to the divine activity of contemplation will be the greatest source of happiness.”

— Aristotle

366. “If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.”

— Aristotle

367. “It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.”

— Aristotle

368. “To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.”

— Aristotle

369. “A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.”

— Aristotle

370. “It is clear that the earth does not move, and that it does not lie elsewhere than at the center.”

— Aristotle

371. “One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.”

— Aristotle

372. “The greatest threat to the state is not faction but distraction.”

— Aristotle

373. “A speaker who is attempting to move people to thought or action must concern himself with Pathos.”

— Aristotle

374. “Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire.”

— Aristotle

375. “Man first begins to philosophize when the necessities of life are supplied.”

— Aristotle

376. “Happiness, then, is found to be something perfect and self-sufficient, being the end to which our actions are directed.”

— Aristotle

377. “The life of theoretical philosophy is the best and happiest a man can lead. Few men are capable of it and then only intermittently. For the rest there is a second-best way of life, that of moral virtue and practical wisdom.”

— Aristotle

378. “Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.”

— Aristotle

379. “Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.”

— Aristotle

380. “Even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion. We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual.”

— Aristotle

381. “For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.”

— Aristotle

382. “Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.”

— Aristotle

383. “A true disciple shows his appreciation by reaching further than his teacher.”

— Aristotle

384. “To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.”

— Aristotle

385. “Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.”

— Aristotle

386. “And of course, the brain is not responsible for any of the sensations at all. The correct view is that the seat and source of sensation is the region of the heart.”

— Aristotle

387. “I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.”

— Aristotle

388. “There is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom.”

— Aristotle

389. “To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.”

— Aristotle

390. “Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”

— Aristotle

391. “Law is mind without reason.”

— Aristotle

392. “Yellow-colored objects appear to be gold.”

— Aristotle

393. “Prayers and sacrifices are of no avail.”

— Aristotle

394. “The beautiful is that which is desirable in itself.”

— Aristotle

395. “We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.”

— Aristotle

396. “Happiness is the utilization of one’s talents along lines of excellence.”

— Aristotle

397. “Metaphor is halfway between the unintelligible and the commonplace.”

— Aristotle

398. “In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.”

— Aristotle

399. “Emotions of any kind are produced by melody and rhythm; therefore by music a man becomes accustomed to feeling the right emotions; music has thus the power to form character, and the various kinds of music based on various modes may be distinguished by their effects on character.”

— Aristotle

400. “The avarice of mankind is insatiable; at one time two obols was pay enough; but now, when this sum has become customary, men always want more and more without end.”

— Aristotle