Top 500 Aristotle Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common; or, at any rate, they care for it only to the extent to which each is individually concerned.”

— Aristotle

352. “Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.”

— Aristotle

353. “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

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

— Aristotle

355. “It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.”

— Aristotle

356. “Emotions of any kind can be evoked by melody and rhythm; therefore music has the power to form character.”

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

358. “The society that loses its grip on the past is in danger, for it produces men who know nothing but the present, and who are not aware that life had been, and could be, different from what it is.”

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

361. “Should a man live underground, and there converse with the works of art and mechanism, and should afterwards be brought up into the open day, and see the several glories of the heaven and earth, he would immediately pronounce them the work of such a Being as we define God to be.”

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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363. “In practical matters the end is not mere speculative knowledge of what is to be done, but rather the doing of it. It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavor to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.”

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

365. “My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.”

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

368. “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

369. “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

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

— Aristotle

371. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

377. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

384. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— 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. “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

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

— Aristotle

390. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

393. “Law is mind without reason.”

— Aristotle

394. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

400. “Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.”

— Aristotle