Quotes & Sayings About Teaching Aristotle

modern humanist education believes in teaching students to think for themselves. It is good to know what Aristotle, Solomon and Aquinas thought about politics, art and economics; yet since the supreme source of meaning and authority lies within ourselves, it is far more important to know what you think about these matters. — Yuval Noah Harari

It is a fact of life that oversimplified accounts of the development of science are often necessary in its teaching. Most scientific progress is a messy, complex and slow process; only with the hindsight of an overall understanding of a phenomenon can a story be told pedagogically rather than chronologically. This necessitates the distilling of certain events and personalities from the melee: those who are deemed to have made the most important contributions. It is inevitable therefore that the many smaller or less important advances scattered randomly across hundreds of years of scientific history tend to be swept up like autumn leaves into neat piles, on top of which sit larger-than-life personalities credited with taking a discipline forward in a single jump. Sometimes this is perfectly valid, and one cannot deny the genius of an Aristotle, a Newton, a Darwin or an Einstein. But it often leaves behind forgotten geniuses and unsung heroes. — Jim Al-Khalili

It is true, indeed, that the account Plato gives in 'Timaeus' is different from what he says in his so-called 'unwritten teachings.' — Aristotle.

In commenting on the Stagirite, St. Thomas discards Averroistic interpretations contrary to revealed dogma, on Providence, on creation, on the personal immortality of the human soul. Hence it can be said that he "baptizes" Aristotle's teaching, that is, he shows how the principles of Aristotle, understood as they can be and must be understood, are in harmony with revelation. Thus he builds, step by step, the foundations of a solid Christian philosophy. — Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

If you read philosophical texts of the tradition, you'll notice they almost never said 'I,' and didn't speak in the first person. From Aristotle to Heidegger, they try to consider their own lives as something marginal or accidental. What was essential was their teaching and their thinking. Biography is something empirical and outside, and is considered an accident that isn't necessarily or essentially linked to the philosophical activity or system. — Jacques Derrida

To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can imagine how this can exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. — G.K. Chesterton

Aristotle insists that habituation, not teaching, is the route to moral virtue (II. 1). We must practise doing good actions, not just read about virtue. — Aristotle.

Teaching is the highest form of understanding. — Aristotle.

To learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all men. — Aristotle.

But since there is but one aim for the entire state, it follows that education must be one and the same for all, and that the responsibility for it must be a public one, not the private affair which it now is, each man looking after his own children and teaching them privately whatever private curriculum he thinks they ought to study. — Aristotle.

Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach. — Aristotle.

The Greeks had had no clear notion of it. For them the future had been indeterminable. In Aristotle's teaching, a man could never say for certain if there would be a sea battle tomorrow. — Jhumpa Lahiri

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching. — Aristotle.

All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge. — Aristotle.

Descartes is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains
in place whereof the Bible, on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served. — Arthur Schopenhauer