Top 500 Aristotle Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “All proofs rest on premises.”

— Aristotle

352. “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

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

— Aristotle

354. “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

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

— Aristotle

356. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

361. “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

362. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

365. “Injustice results as much from treating unequals equally as from treating equals unequally.”

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

376. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

381. “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

382. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

385. “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

386. “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

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

— Aristotle

388. “God and nature create nothing that does not fulfill a purpose.”

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

390. “Law is mind without reason.”

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

393. “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

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

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

— Aristotle

397. “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

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

— 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