Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies.
ARISTOTLE
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Poetics
Money ... is founded merely on convention; its currency and value depending on the mutable wills of men.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.
ARISTOTLE
letter to Alexander on the policy toward the Cities
It is not to avoid cold or hunger that tyrants cover themselves with blood; and states decree the most illustrious rewards, not to him who catches a thief, but to him who kills an usurper.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
It is easy to have some knowledge about honey, wine, and hellebore, of cautery and the use of the knife; but how they should be applied for restoring health, to whom and when, is no less a matter than to be a physician.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Discontents arise not merely from the inequality of possessions, but from the equality of honors. The multitude complain that property is unjustly, because unequally, distributed; men of superior merit or superior pretentions complain that honors are unjustly, if equally, distributed.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
All learning is derived from things previously known.
ARISTOTLE
The Nicomachean Ethics
A man who has been well trained will not in any case look for more accuracy than the nature of the matter allows; for to expect exact demonstration from a rhetorician is as absurd as to accept from a mathematician a statement only probable.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
A citizen is a constituent part of a whole or system, which invests him with powers and qualifies him for functions, for which, in his individual capacity, he is totally unfit; and independently of which system, he might subsist indeed as a solitary savage, but could never attain that improved and happy state to which his progressive nature invariably tends.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Wicked men obey for fear, but the good for love.
ARISTOTLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Whether government be a good or a bad thing, it is fair that men of equal abilities and virtues should equally share in it; that they should receive the advantage of it as their right, or bear the burden of it as their duty.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
To those who cite the disreputable sorts of pleasure one may fairly reply that these are not really pleasant. For we ought not, because they are pleasant to the wrongly disposed, to think they are generally pleasant, or to any but these; just as things that are wholesome or sweet or bitter to the sick, are not so to all, and as things are not really white that seem so to those suffering from opthalmia.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Now, it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges; and for this several reasons. First, to find one man, or a few men, who are sensible persons and capable of legislating and administering justice is easier than to find a large number. Next, laws are made after long consideration, whereas decisions in the courts are given at short notice, which makes it hard for those who try the case to satisfy the claims of justice and expediency.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
Men fancy that because doing wrong is in their own power, therefore to be just is easy. But it is not so: to lie with one's neighbour's wife, and to strike some one near, and the giving with the hand the bribe ... are easy acts, and in men's own power; but to do these things with the particular disposition is neither easy nor in their power.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Kings ought to differ from their subjects, not in kind, but in perfection.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
ARISTOTLE
Politics