Self By Aristotle Quotes & Sayings

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later. — Aristotle.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted. — Aristotle.

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage. — Aristotle.

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. — Aristotle.

Aristotle had described the magnanimous man, who is great and knows that he is great. But Aristotle would never have recovered his own greatness, but for the miracle that created the more magnanimous man; who is great and knows that he is small. — G.K. Chesterton

The man who does not enjoy doing noble actions is not a good man at all. — Aristotle.

The soul is characterized by these capacities; self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and movement. — Aristotle.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile. — Aristotle.

Therefore the good man ought to be a lover of self, since he will then both benefit himself by acting nobly and aid his fellows; but the bad man ought not to be a lover of self, since he will follow his base passions, and so injure both himself and his neighbors. With the bad man therefore, what he does is not in accord with what he ought to do, but the good man does what he ought, since intelligence always chooses for itself that which is best, and the good man obeys his intelligence. — Aristotle.

Dissimilarity of habit tends more than anything to destroy affection. — Aristotle.

And so the good man ought to be Self-loving: because by doing what is noble he will have advantage himself and will do good to others: but the bad man ought not to be, because he will harm himself and his neighbours by following low and evil passions. In the case of the bad man, what he ought to do and what he does are at variance, but the good man does what he ought to do, because all Intellect chooses what is best for itself and the good man puts himself under the direction of Intellect. — Aristotle.

It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement. — Aristotle.

Any change of government which has to be introduced should be one which men, starting from their existing constitutions, will be both willing and able to adopt, since there is quite as much trouble in the reformation of an old constitution as in the establishment of a new one, just as to unlearn is as hard as to learn. — Aristotle.

Don't sleep too much. If you sleep three hours less each night for a year, you will have an extra month and a half to succeed in. — Aristotle Onassis

Nothing has been as instructive in exploring the notion of authenticity as relearning the work of the great philosophers Aristotle and Plato. We are struck by their applicability to our work as we help companies and people develop their brands. Why do these early philosophers have so much to say that is helpful to modern marketers? We believe it is because they were focused on the fundamental issues of authenticity that we all face: Who are we? Why are we? How should we behave? Asking these questions encourages us to deepen our self-awareness. In particular, this issue of "who are we?" is critical. Knowing who we are is the key to elevating our capacities and performance. — Tom Hayes

If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies. — David Mamet

Every art, and every science reduced to a teachable form, and in like manner every action and moral choice, aims, it is thought, at some good: for which reason a common and by no means a bad description of the Chief Good is, that which all things aim at. — Aristotle.

Among people lacking self-restraint, those apt to be impulsive40 are better than those who are in possession of an argument [logos] but do not abide by it. For — Aristotle.

When ... we, as individuals, obey laws that direct us to behave for the welfare of the community as a whole, we are indirectly helping to promote the pursuit of happiness by our fellow human beings. — Aristotle.

Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not easy. ARISTOTLE, The Nicomachean Ethics — Daniel Goleman

Be a free thinker and don't accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in. — Aristotle.

Aristotle didn't have a problem with abortion," she says.
"Oh, well, good, that's a comfort," I say. — Deborah Meyler

As Aristotle said, you have to be an aristocrat or a reactionary to write a good proletarian poem. — Kenneth Rexroth

All friendly feelings toward others come from the friendly feelings a person has for himself. — Aristotle.

Even subjects that are known are known only to a few — Aristotle.

Beside these there is no other way; for the act is necessarily either done or not done, and those who act either have knowledge or do not. — Aristotle.

We long for experiences "of profound connection with others," he writes, "of deep understanding of natural phenomena, of love, of being profoundly moved by music or tragedy, or doing something new and innovative." Just as important, we long for esteem and pride, "a self that happiness is a fitting response to." Implicit in Nozick's experiment is the idea that happiness should be a by-product, not a goal. Many of the ancient Greeks believed the same. To Aristotle, eudaimonia (roughly translated as "flourishing") meant doing something productive. Happiness could only be achieved through exploiting our strengths and our potential. To be happy, one must do, not just feel. — Jennifer Senior

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.

Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled ; and by doing brave acts, we become brave. — Aristotle.

For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Daedalus or the tripods of Hephaestus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves. — Aristotle.

Excavations at Ai Khanoum on the northern border of modern Afghanistan have produced great quantities of Greek inscriptions and even the remnants of a philosophical treatise originally on papyrus. One of the most interesting is the base of a dedication by one Klearchos, perhaps the known student of Aristotle, that records his bringing to this new Greek city, Alexandria on the Oxus, the traditional maxims from the shrine of Apollo at Delphi concerning the five ages of man:

In childhood, seemliness
In youth, self-control
In middle age, justice
In old age, wise council
In death, painlessness — Robin Lane Fox

The myth of Oedipus . . . arouses powerful intellectual and emotional reactions in the adult-so much so, that it may provide a cathartic experience, as Aristotle taught all tragedy does. [A reader] may wonder why he is so deeply moved; and in responding to what he observes as his emotional reaction, ruminating about the mythical events and what these mean to him, a person may come to clarify his thoughts and feelings. With this, certain inner tensions which are the consequence of events long past may be relieved; previously unconscious material can then enter one's awareness and become accessible for conscious working through. This can happen if the observer is deeply moved emotionally by the myth, and at the sametime strongly motivated intellectually to understand it. — Bruno Bettelheim

And when with excellent Microscopes I discern in otherwise invisible Objects the Inimitable Subtlety of Nature's Curious Workmanship; And when, in a word, by the help of Anatomicall Knives, and the light of Chymicall Furnaces, I study the Book of Nature, and consult the Glosses of Aristotle, Epicurus, Paracelsus, Harvey, Helmont, and other learn'd Expositors of that instructive Volumne; I find my self oftentimes reduc'd to exclaim with the Psalmist, How manifold are thy works, O Lord? In wisdom hast thou made them all. — Robert Boyle

The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things ... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else. — Aristotle.

All men desire by nature to know. — Aristotle.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects - things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language - either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors. — Aristotle.

It is therefore not of small moment whether we are trained from adulthood in one set of habits or another; on the contrary it is of very great, or rather supreme importance. — Aristotle.

Metaphor is halfway between the unintelligible and the commonplace. — Aristotle.

Most men appear to think that the art of despotic government is statesmanship, and what men affirm to be unjust and inexpedient in their own case they are not ashamed of practicing towards others; they demand just rule for themselves, but where other men are concerned they care nothing about it. Such behavior is irrational; unless the one party is, and the other is not, born to serve, in which case men have a right to command, not indeed all their fellows, but only those who are intended to be subjects; just as we ought not to hunt mankind, whether for food or sacrifice . — Aristotle.

The man who confers a favour would rather not be repaid in the same coin. — Aristotle.

Adoration is made out of a solitary soul occupying two bodies. — Aristotle.

For Dewey, the Great Community was the basic fact of history. The individual and the soul were invalid concepts, man was truly man, not as an individual, but as after Aristotle, in society and supremely in the State. Thus, for Dewey, true education mean not the development of the individual in terms of learning, but his socialization.
Progressive education ... educates the individual in terms of particular facts of the universe without reference to God, truth, or morality. — Rousas John Rushdoony

Others of them employ outward marks ... They style themselves Gnostics. They also possess images, some of them painted and others formed from different kinds of material. They maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honoring these images just like the Gentiles. — Irenaeus Of Lyons

I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to. — William Stanley Jevons

For he who lives as passion directs will not hear argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways? — Aristotle.

He is courageous who endures and fears the right thing, for the right motive, in the right way and at the right times. — Aristotle.

So it happens that we must ask ourselves, with regard to truth, not for a new criterion for it, which will be better polished than earlier ones, but, peremptorily and seizing it by the lapels, "what is truth as such," and with regard to reality, not what things are or what and how is that which is, but for what reason that X which we call Being is in the Universe, and with regard to knowledge we must not ask for its bases and limits - as Plato, Aristotle Descartes, Kant did - but for something which comes before all this: for what reason we concern ourselves with trying to know. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

The same thing may have all the kinds of causes, e.g. the moving cause of a house is the art or the builder, the final cause is the function it fulfils, the matter is earth and stones, and the form is the definitory formula. — Aristotle.

An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise. — Robert South

But to be constantly asking 'What is the use of it?' is unbecoming to those of broad vision and unworthy of free men. — Aristotle.

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.

Anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy. — Aristotle.

He then alone will strictly be called brave who is fearless of a noble death, and of all such chances as come upon us with sudden death in their train. — Aristotle.

The three things Aristotle couldn't understand: the work of the bees, the coming and going of the tide, and the mind of a woman. - Irish Triad — Dorien Kelly

He who is by nature not his own but another's man is by nature a slave. — Aristotle.

The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief. — Aristotle.

Friendship is communion. — Aristotle.

So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind. — Aristotle.

To Aristotle or to Plato the State is, above all, a large and powerful educative agency which gives the individual increased opportunities of self-development and greater capacities for the enjoyment of life. — Aristotle.

There are some jobs in which it is impossible for a man to be virtuous. — Aristotle.