Background Image

...

One Can Aim At Honor Both As One Ought, And More Than One Ought, And Less Than One Ought. He Whose Craving For Honor Is Excessive Is Said To Be Ambitious, And He Who Is Deficient In This Respect Unambitious; While He Who Observes The Mean Has No Peculiar Name.

-Aristotle

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

One Can Aim At

Aristotle

...

One Can Aim At Honor Both As One Ought, And More Than One Ought, And Less Than One Ought. He Whose Craving For Honor Is Excessive Is Said To Be Ambitious, And He Who Is Deficient In This Respect Unambitious; While He Who Observes The Mean Has No Peculiar Name.

Views: 8766

Topic

More From Aristotle

Comedy Has Had No History, Because It Was Not At First Treated Seriously.

To Give Away Money Is An Easy Matter And In Any Man's Power. But To Decide To Whom To Give It And How Large And When, And For What Purpose And How, Is Neither In Every Man's Power Nor An Easy Matter.

Happiness Depends On Ourselves.

Those Who Cannot Bravely Face Danger Are The Slaves Of Their Attackers.

American Veterans

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.

Man's Best Friend Is One Who Wishes Well To The Object Of His Wish For His Sake, Even If No One Is To Know Of It.

This Much Then, Is Clear: In All Our Conduct It Is The Mean That Is To Be Commended.

Plato Is My Friend, But Truth Is A Better Friend.

The Only Way To Achieve True Success Is To Express Yourself Completely In Service To Society.

Express Yourself

Of Means Of Persuading By Speaking There Are Three Species: Some Consist In The Character Of The Speaker; Others In The Disposing The Hearer A Certain Way; Others In The Thing Itself Which Is Said, By Reason Of Its Proving, Or Appearing To Prove The Point.

But It Is Not At All Certain That This Superiority Of The Many Over The Sound Few Is Possible In The Case Of Every People And Every Large Number. There Are Some Whom It Would Be Impossible: Otherwise The Theory Would Apply To Wild Animals- And Yet Some Men Are Hardly Any Better Than Wild Animals.

The Proof That You Know Something Is That You Are Able To Teach It

Teaching Is The Highest Form Of Understanding.

Again, The Male Is By Nature Superior, And The Female Inferior; And The One Rules, And The Other Is Ruled; This Principle, Of Necessity, Extends To All Mankind.

Anything That We Have To Learn To Do We Learn By The Actual Doing Of It; People Become Builders By Building And Instrumentalists By Playing Instruments. Similarily, We Become Just By Performing Just Acts, Temperate By Performing Temperate Ones, Brave By Performing Brave Ones.

If One Way Be Better Than Another, That You May Be Sure Is Nature's Way.

Every Art And Every Inquiry, And Similarly Every Action And Pursuit, Is Thought To Aim At Some Good; And For This Reason The Good Has Rightly Been Declared To Be That At Which All Things Aim.

The Ideal Man Is His Own Best Friend And Takes Delight In Privacy.

Men Are Divided Between Those Who Are As Thrifty As If They Would Live Forever, And Those Who Are As Extravagant As If They Were Going To Die The Next Day.

The Bad Man Is Continually At War With, And In Opposition To, Himself.

The Ideal Man Takes Joy In Doing Favors For Others.

Law Is Order, And Good Law Is Good Order.

Nature Herself, As Has Been Often Said, Requires That We Should Be Able, Not Only To Work Well, But To Use Leisure Well; For, As I Must Repeat Once Again, The First Principle Of All Action Is Leisure. Both Are Required, But Leisure Is Better Than Occupation And Is Its End.

No One Finds Fault With Defects Which Are The Result Of Nature.

If Happiness Is Activity In Accordance With Excellence, It Is Reasonable That It Should Be In Accordance With The Highest Excellence.

Madness Is Badness Of Spirit, When One Seeks Profit From All Sources.

The Good Citizen Need Not Of Necessity Possess The Virtue Which Makes A Good Man.

In The Works Of Nature, Purpose, Not Accident, Is The Main Thing.

Misfortune Shows Those Who Are Not Really Friends.

You Can Never Learn Anything That You Did Not Already Know

The Activity Of Happiness Must Occupy An Entire Lifetime; For One Swallow Does Not A Summer Make.

Excellence Is An Art Won By Training And Habituation. We Do Not Act Rightly Because We Have Virtue Or Excellence, But We Rather Have Those Because We Have Acted Rightly. We Are What We Repeatedly Do. Excellence, Then, Is Not An Act But A Habit.

... The Science We Are After Is Not About Mathematicals Either None Of Them, You See, Is Separable.

Words Of Wisdom

It Is In Justice That The Ordering Of Society Is Centered.

Equity Is That Idea Of Justice Which Contravenes The Written Law.

These Two Rational Faculties May Be Designated The Scientific Faculty And The Calculative Faculty Respectively; Since Calculation Is The Same As Deliberation, And Deliberation Is Never Exercised About Things That Are Invariable, So That The Calculative Faculty Is A Separate Part Of The Rational Half Of The Soul.

And Inasmuch As The Great-souled Man Deserves Most, He Must Be The Best Of Men; For The Better A Man Is The More He Deserves, And He That Is Best Deserves Most. Therefore The Truly Great-souled Man Must Be A Good Man. Indeed Greatness In Each Of The Virtues Would Seem To Go With Greatness Of Soul.

When You Ask A Dumb Question, You Get A Smart Answer.

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.

Whatsoever That Be Within Us That Feels, Thinks, Desires, And Animates, Is Something Celestial, Divine, And, Consequently, Imperishable.

We Must As Second Best, As People Say, Take The Least Of The Evils.

And It Is Characteristic Of Man That He Alone Has Any Sense Of Good And Evil, Of Just And Unjust, And The Like, And The Association Of Living Beings Who Have This Sense Makes Family And A State.

Every Wicked Man Is In Ignorance As To What He Ought To Do, And From What To Abstain, And It Is Because Of Error Such As This That Men Become Unjust And, In A Word, Wicked.

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.

To Be Angry Is Easy. But To Be Angry With The Right Man At The Right Time And In The Right Manner, That Is Not Easy.

It Is More Difficult To Organize A Peace Than To Win A War; But The Fruits Of Victory Will Be Lost If The Peace Is Not Organized.

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.

Courage Is The Mother Of All Virtues Because Without It, You Cannot Consistently Perform The Others.

Men Become Richer Not Only By Increasing Their Existing Wealth But Also By Decreasing Their Expenditure.

.. For Desire Is Like A Wild Beast, And Anger Perverts Rulers And The Very Best Of Men. Hence Law Is Intelligence Without Appetition.

It Concerns Us To Know The Purposes We Seek In Life, For Then, Like Archers Aiming At A Definite Mark, We Shall Be More Likely To Attain What We Want.

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.

Even When Laws Have Been Written Down, They Ought Not Always To Remain Unaltered.

Leisure Of Itself Gives Pleasure And Happiness And Enjoyment Of Life, Which Are Experienced, Not By The Busy Man, But By Those Who Have Leisure.

Equality Is Of Two Kinds, Numerical And Proportional; By The First I Mean Sameness Of Equality In Number Or Size; By The Second, Equality Of Ratios.

No Notice Is Taken Of A Little Evil, But When It Increases It Strikes The Eye.

To Die In Order To Avoid The Pains Of Poverty, Love, Or Anything That Is Disagreeable, Is Not The Part Of A Brave Man, But Of A Coward.

That Body Is Heavier Than Another Which, In An Equal Bulk, Moves Downward Quicker.

As Often As We Do Good, We Offer Sacrifices To God.

Sacrifice To God

Being A Father Is The Most Rewarding Thing A Man Whose Career Has Plateaued Can Do.

Thus Every Action Must Be Due To One Or Other Of Seven Causes: Chance, Nature, Compulsion, Habit, Reasoning, Anger, Or Appetite.

Happiness Is Activity.

Where Your Talents And The Needs Of The World Cross, Therein Lies Your Vocation. These Two, Your Talents And The Needs Of The World, Are The Great Wake Up Calls To Your True Vocation In Life... To Ignore This, Is In Some Sense, Is To Lose Your Soul.

A Democracy When Put To The Strain Grows Weak, And Is Supplanted By Oligarchy.

We Are What We Repeatedly Do.

Wicked Men Obey Out Of Fear. Good Men, Out Of Love

We Assume Therefore That Moral Virtue Is The Quality Of Acting In The Best Way In Relation To Pleasures And Pains, And That Vice Is The Opposite.

If Happiness, Then, Is Activity Expressing Virtue, It Is Reasonable For It To Express The Supreme Virtue, Which Will Be The Virtueof The Best Thing.

Today You Can Start Forming Habits For Overcoming All Obstacles In Life... Even Nicotine Cravings

Man By Nature Desires To Know.

Wit Is Cultured Insolence.

For We Are Inquiring Not In Order To Know What Virtue Is, But In Order To Become Good, Since Otherwise Our Inquiry Would Have Been Of No Use

For Often, When One Is Asleep, There Is Something In Consciousness Which Declares That What Then Presents Itself Is But A Dream.

The Most Perfect Political Community Must Be Amongst Those Who Are In The Middle Rank, And Those States Are Best Instituted Wherein These Are A Larger And More Respectable Part, If Possible, Than Both The Other; Or, If That Cannot Be, At Least Than Either Of Them Separate.

Happiness Is Thought To Depend On Leisure; For We Are Busy That We May Have Leisure, And Make War That We May Live In Peace.

Every Virtue Is A Mean Between Two Extremes, Each Of Which Is A Vice.

Our Problem Is Not That We Aim Too High And Miss, But That We Aim Too Low And Hit.

When Pleasure Is At The Bar The Jury Is Not Impartial.

So Virtue Is A Purposive Disposition, Lying In A Mean That Is Relative To Us And Determined By A Rational Principle, And By That Which A Prudent Man Would Use To Determine It. It Is A Mean Between Two Kinds Of Vice, One Of Excess And The Other Of Deficiency.

A Friend Is Simply One Soul In Two Bodies.

The Greatest Thing By Far Is To Be A Master Of Metaphor; It Is The One Thing That Cannot Be Learned From Others; And It Is Also A Sign Of Genius, Since A Good Metaphor Implies An Intuitive Perception Of The Similarity Of The Dissimilar.

No Excellent Soul Is Exempt From A Mixture Of Madness.

Whether We Will Philosophize Or We Won't Philosophize, We Must Philosophize.

What You Have To Learn To Do, You Learn By Doing.

Why Is It That All Men Who Are Outstanding In Philosophy, Poetry Or The Arts Are Melancholic?

There Are No Experienced Young People. Time Makes Experience.

It Is The Mark Of An Educated Mind To Expect That Amount Of Exactness Which The Nature Of The Particular Subject Admits. It Is Equally Unreasonable To Accept Merely Probable Conclusions From A Mathematician And To Demand Strict Demonstration From An Orator.

Great And Frequent Reverses Can Crush And Mar Our Bliss Both By The Pain They Cause And By The Hindrance They Offer To Many Activities. Yet Nevertheless Even In Adversity Nobility Shines Through, When A Man Endures Repeated And Severe Misfortune With Patience, Not Owing To Insensibility But From Generosity And Greatness Of Soul.

1 Is Not Prime, By Definition. 2 Is An Unnatural Prime, 4 Is An Unnatural Prime, And 6 Is An Unnatural Prime. All Other Natural Primes Cannot Be Unnatural Primes.

When People Are Friends, They Have No Need Of Justice, But When They Are Just, They Need Friendship In Addition.

Every Realm Of Nature Is Marvelous.

The Soul Becomes Prudent By Sitting And Being Quiet.

Happiness Lies In Virtuous Activity, And Perfect Happiness Lies In The Best Activity, Which Is Contemplative

Some Men Turn Every Quality Or Art Into A Means Of Making Money; This They Conceive To Be The End, And To The Promotion Of The End All Things Must Contribute.

The Worst Thing About Slavery Is That The Slaves Eventually Get To Like It.

[this Element], The Seat Of The Appetites And Of Desire In General, Does In A Sense Participate In Principle, As Being Amenable And Obedient To It

When Couples Have Children In Excess, Let Abortion Be Procured Before Sense And Life Have Begun; What May Or May Not Be Lawfully Done In These Cases Depends On The Question Of Life And Sensation.

Whether We Call It Sacrifice, Or Poetry, Or Adventure, It Is Always The Same Voice That Calls.

If You String Together A Set Of Speeches Expressive Of Character, And Well Finished In Point And Diction And Thought, You Will Not Produce The Essential Tragic Effect Nearly So Well As With A Play Which, However Deficient In These Respects, Yet Has A Plot And Artistically Constructed Incidents.

Virtue Means Doing The Right Thing, In Relation To The Right Person, At The Right Time, To The Right Extent, In The Right Manner, And For The Right Purpose. Thus, To Give Money Away Is Quite A Simple Task, But For The Act To Be Virtuous, The Donor Must Give To The Right Person, For The Right Purpose, In The Right Amount, In The Right Manner, And At The Right Time.

The State Or Political Community, Which Is The Highest Of All, And Which Embraces All The Rest, Aims At Good In A Greater Degree Than Any Other, And At The Highest Good.

It Is Well Said, Then, That It Is By Doing Just Acts That The Just Man Is Produced, And By Doing Temperate Acts The Temperate Man; Without Doing These No One Would Have Even A Prospect Of Becoming Good. But Most People Do Not Do These, But Take Refuge In Theory And Think They Are Being Philosophers And Will Become Good In This Way, Behaving Somewhat Like Patients Who Listen Attentively To Their Doctors, But Do None Of The Things They Are Ordered To Do.

He Who Can Be, And Therefore Is, Another's, And He Who Participates In Reason Enough To Apprehend, But Not To Have, Is A Slave By Nature.

Thus It Is Thought That Justice Is Equality; And So It Is, But Not For All Persons, Only For Those That Are Equal. Inequality Also Is Thought To Be Just; And So It Is, But Not For All, Only For The Unequal. We Make Bad Mistakes If We Neglect This For Whom When We Are Deciding What Is Just. The Reason Is That We Are Making Judgements About Ourselves, And People Are Generally Bad Judges Where Their Own Interests Are Involved.

The Ultimate End...is Not Knowledge, But Action. To Be Half Right On Time May Be More Important Than To Obtain The Whole Truth Too Late.

No Man Of High And Generous Spirit Is Ever Willing To Indulge In Flattery; The Good May Feel Affection For Others, But Will Not Flatter Them.

Generous Spirit

Happiness, Then, Is Found To Be Something Perfect And Self-sufficient, Being The End To Which Our Actions Are Directed.

Actions Determine What Kind Of Characteristics Are Developed.

Characteristics

For Pleasure Is A State Of Soul, And To Each Man That Which He Is Said To Be A Lover Of Is Pleasant.

What We Expect, That We Find.

Law Of Attraction

There Is A Foolish Corner In The Brain Of The Wisest Man.

Young Men Have Strong Passions And Tend To Gratify Them Indiscriminately. Of The Bodily Desires, It Is The Sexual By Which They Are Most Swayed And In Which They Show Absence Of Control...they Are Changeable And Fickle In Their Desires Which Are Violent While They Last, But Quickly Over: Their Impulses Are Keen But Not Deep Rooted.

The Continuum Is That Which Is Divisible Into Indivisibles That Are Infinitely Divisible.

The Democrats Think That As They Are Equal They Ought To Be Equal In All Things.

There's Many A Slip Between The Cup And The Lip.

Metaphor Is Halfway Between The Unintelligible And The Commonplace.

Excellence Or Virtue In A Man Will Be The Disposition Which Renders Him A Good Man And Also Which Will Cause Him To Perform His Function Well.

All Men By Nature Desire To Know. An Indication Of This Is The Delight We Take In Our Senses; For Even Apart From Their Usefulness They Are Loved For Themselves...

Of The Tyrant, Spies And Informers Are The Principal Instruments. War Is His Favorite Occupation, For The Sake Of Engrossing The Attention Of The People, And Making Himself Necessary To Them As Their Leader.

Art Is A Higher Type Of Knowledge Than Experience.

The True Nature Of A Thing Is The Highest It Can Become.

Everything Is Done With A Goal, And That Goal Is "good."

Meaning Of Life

It Was Through The Feeling Of Wonder That Men Now And At First Began To Philosophize.

A Friend To All Is A Friend To None.

At First He Who Invented Any Art That Went Beyond The Common Perceptions Of Man Was Naturally Admired By Men, Not Only Because There Was Something Useful In The Inventions, But Because He Was Thought Wise And Superior To The Rest. But As More Arts Were Invented, And Some Were Directed To The Necessities Of Life, Others To Its Recreation, The Inventors Of The Latter Were Always Regarded As Wiser Than The Inventors Of The Former, Because Their Branches Of Knowledge Did Not Aim At Utility.

Every Formed Disposition Of The Soul Realizes Its Full Nature In Relation To And Dealing With That Class Of Objects By Which It Is Its Nature To Be Corrupted Or Improved.

Revolutions Are Effected In Two Ways, By Force And By Fraud.

We Have Next To Consider The Formal Definition Of Virtue.

If They Do Not Share Equally Enjoyments And Toils, Those Who Labor Much And Get Little Will Necessarily Complain Of Those Who Labor Little And Receive Or Consume Much. But Indeed There Is Always A Difficulty In Men Living Together And Having All Human Relations In Common, But Especially In Their Having Common Property.

Praise Invariably Implies A Reference To A Higher Standard.

Higher Standards

The Government Of Freemen Is Nobler And Implies More Virtue Than Despotic Government. Neither Is A City To Be Deemed Happy Or A Legislator To Be Praised Because He Trains His Citizens To Conquer And Obtain Dominion Over Their Neighbors, For There Is Great Evil In This.

If Then It Be Possible That One Contrary Should Exist, Or Be Called Into Existence, The Other Contrary Will Also Appear To Be Possible.

Everybody Loves A Thing More If It Has Cost Him Trouble: For Instance Those Who Have Made Money Love Money More Than Those Who Have Inherited It.

Nature Does Nothing In Vain.

In Poverty And Other Misfortunes Of Life, True Friends Are A Sure Refuge.

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.

Temperance And Bravery, Then, Are Ruined By Excess And Deficiency, But Preserved By The Mean.

Nature Makes Nothing Incomplete, And Nothing In Vain.

Good Has Two Meanings: It Means That Which Is Good Absolutely And That Which Is Good For Somebody.

Modesty Is Hardly To Be Described As A Virtue. It Is A Feeling Rather Than A Disposition. It Is A Kind Of Fear Of Falling Into Disrepute.

The Greatest Injustices Proceed From Those Who Pursue Excess, Not By Those Who Are Driven By Necessity.

All Men Naturally Desire Knowledge. An Indication Of This Is Our Esteem For The Senses; For Apart From Their Use We Esteem Them For Their Own Sake, And Most Of All The Sense Of Sight. Not Only With A View To Action, But Even When No Action Is Contemplated, We Prefer Sight, Generally Speaking, To All The Other Senses. The Reason Of This Is That Of All The Senses Sight Best Helps Us To Know Things, And Reveals Many Distinctions.

In A Democracy The Poor Will Have More Power Than The Rich, Because There Are More Of Them, And The Will Of The Majority Is Supreme.

Democracies Have

If The Consequences Are The Same It Is Always Better To Assume The More Limited Antecedent, Since In Things Of Nature The Limited, As Being Better, Is Sure To Be Found, Wherever Possible, Rather Than The Unlimited.

For We Do Not Think That We Know A Thing Until We Are Acquainted With Its Primary Conditions Or First Principles, And Have Carried Our Analysis As Far As Its Simplest Elements.

While Most Of Those Who Hold That The Whole Heaven Is Finite Say That The Earth Lies At The Center, The Philosophers Of Italy, The So-called Pythagoreans, Assert The Contrary. They Say That In The Middle There Is Fire, And That The Earth Is One Of The Stars, And By Its Circular Motion Round The Center Produces Night And Day.

Neither Should We Forget The Mean, Which At The Present Day Is Lost Sight Of In Perverted Forms Of Government; For Many Practices Which Appear To Be Democratical Are The Ruin Of Democracies, . . Those Who Think That All Virtue Is To Be Found In Their Own Party Principles Push Matters To Extremes; They Do Not Consider That Disproportion Destroys A State.

Teenagers These Days Are Out Of Control. They Eat Like Pigs, They Are Disrespectful Of Adults, They Interrupt And Contradict Their Parents, And They Terrorize Their Teachers.

Evils Draw Men Together.

By 'life,' We Mean A Thing That Can Nourish Itself And Grow And Decay.

It Seems That Ambition Makes Most People Wish To Be Loved Rather Than To Love Others.

The Unfortunate Need People Who Will Be Kind To Them; The Prosperous Need People To Be Kind To.

It Must Not Be Supposed That Happiness Will Demand Many Or Great Possessions; For Self-sufficiency Does Not Depend On Excessive Abundance, Nor Does Moral Conduct, And It Is Possible To Perform Noble Deeds Even Without Being Ruler Of Land And Sea: One Can Do Virtuous Acts With Quite Moderate Resources. This May Be Clearly Observed In Experience: Private Citizens Do Not Seem To Be Less But More Given To Doing Virtuous Actions Than Princes And Potentates. It Is Sufficient Then If Moderate Resources Are Forthcoming; For A Life Of Virtuous Activity Will Be Essentially A Happy Life.

When Quarrels And Complaints Arise, It Is When People Who Are Equal Have Not Got Equal Shares, Or Vice-versa.

We Must Become Just Be Doing Just Acts.

The High-minded Man Does Not Bear Grudges, For It Is Not The Mark Of A Great Soul To Remember Injuries, But To Forget Them.

Youth Should Stay Away From All Evil, Especially Things That Produce Wickedness And Ill-will.

A True Disciple Shows His Appreciation By Reaching Further Than His Teacher.

Fortune Favours The Bold.

If Purpose, Then, Is Inherent In Art, So Is It In Nature Also. The Best Illustration Is The Case Of A Man Being His Own Physician, For Nature Is Like That - Agent And Patient At Once.

If Then Nature Makes Nothing Without Some End In View, Nothing To No Purpose, It Must Be That Nature Has Made All Of Them For The Sake Of Man.

Meanness Is Incurable; It Cannot Be Cured By Old Age, Or By Anything Else.

Now That Practical Skills Have Developed Enough To Provide Adequately For Material Needs, One Of These Sciences Which Are Not Devoted To Utilitarian Ends [mathematics] Has Been Able To Arise In Egypt, The Priestly Caste There Having The Leisure Necessary For Disinterested Research.

You Are What You Do Repeatedly.

It Is Not Always The Same Thing To Be A Good Man And A Good Citizen.

They Who Are To Be Judges Must Also Be Performers.

Man Perfected By Society Is The Best Of All Animals; He Is The Most Terrible Of All When He Lives Without Law And Without Justice. If He Finds Himself An Individual Who Cannot Live In Society, Or Who Pretends He Has Need Of Only His Own Resources Do Not Consider Him As A Member Of Humanity; He Is A Savage Beast Or A God.

There Is More Evidence To Prove That Saltness [of The Sea] Is Due To The Admixture Of Some Substance, Besides That Which We Have Adduced. Make A Vessel Of Wax And Put It In The Sea, Fastening Its Mouth In Such A Way As To Prevent Any Water Getting In. Then The Water That Percolates Through The Wax Sides Of The Vessel Is Sweet, The Earthy Stuff, The Admixture Of Which Makes The Water Salt, Being Separated Off As It Were By A Filter.

Sophocles Said He Drew Men As They Ought To Be, And Euripides As They Were.

There Are, Then, These Three Means Of Effecting Persuasion. The Man Who Is To Be In Command Of Them Must, It Is Clear, Be Able (1) To Reason Logically, (2) To Understand Human Character And Goodness In Their Various Forms, And (3) To Understand The Emotions--that Is, To Name Them And Describe Them, To Know Their Causes And The Way In Which They Are Excited.

The So-called Pythagoreans, Who Were The First To Take Up Mathematics, Not Only Advanced This Subject, But Saturated With It, They Fancied That The Principles Of Mathematics Were The Principles Of All Things.

Aristocracy Is That Form Of Government In Which Education And Discipline Are Qualifications For Suffrage And Office Holding.

The Mathematical Sciences Particularly Exhibit Order Symmetry And Limitations; And These Are The Greatest Forms Of The Beautiful.

A Friend Is A Second Self, So That Our Consciousness Of A Friend's Existence...makes Us More Fully Conscious Of Our Own Existence.

A State Of The Soul Is Either (1) An Emotion, (2) A Capacity, Or (3) A Disposition; Virtue Therefore Must Be One Of These Three Things.

A Great City Is Not To Be Confounded With A Populous One.

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.

The Purpose Of Art Is To Represent The Meaning Of Things. This Represents The True Reality, Not External Aspects.

People Do Not Naturally Become Morally Excellent Or Practically Wise. They Become So, If At All, Only As The Result Of Lifelong Personal And Community Effort.

Happiness Belongs To The Self Sufficient.

The Quality Of Life Is Determined By Its Activities.

In The First Place, Then, Men Should Guard Against The Beginning Of Change, And In The Second Place They Should Not Rely Upon The Political Devices Of Which I Have Already Spoken Invented Only To Deceive The People, For They Are Proved By Experience To Be Useless.

Happiness Seems To Require A Modicum Of External Prosperity.

The Hand Is The Tool Of Tools.

Music Has The Power Of Producing A Certain Effect On The Moral Character Of The Soul, And If It Has The Power To Do This, It Is Clear That The Young Must Be Directed To Music And Must Be Educated In It.

Moral Virtue Is ... A Mean Between Two Vices, That Of Excess And That Of Defect, And ... It Is No Small Task To Hit The Mean In Each Case, As It Is Not, For Example, Any Chance Comer, But Only The Geometer, Who Can Find The Center Of A Given Circle.

We Have No Evidence As Yet About Mind Or The Power To Think; It Seems To Be A Widely Different Kind Of Soul, Differing As What Is Eternal From What Is Perishable; It Alone Is Capable Of Existence In Isolation From All Other Psychic Powers.

Philosophy Is The Science Which Considers Truth.

In All Things Of Nature There Is Something Of The Marvelous.

Memory Is Therefore, Neither Perception Nor Conception, But A State Or Affection Of One Of These, Conditioned By Lapse Of Time. As Already Observed, There Is No Such Thing As Memory Of The Present While Present, For The Present Is Object Only Of Perception, And The Future, Of Expectation, But The Object Of Memory Is The Past. All Memory, Therefore, Implies A Time Elapsed; Consequently Only Those Animals Which Perceive Time Remember, And The Organ Whereby They Perceive Time Is Also That Whereby They Remember.

The Specific Excellence Of Verbal Expression In Poetry Is To Be Clear Without Being Low.

There Is Nothing Unequal As The Equal Treatment Of Unequals.

Equal Treatment

When The Citizens At Large Administer The State For The Common Interest, The Government Is Called By The Generic Name - A Constitution.

No Great Mind Has Ever Existed Without A Touch Of Madness.

He Overcomes A Stout Enemy Who Overcomes His Own Anger.

It Is Not Easy For A Person To Do Any Great Harm When His Tenure Of Office Is Short, Whereas Long Possession Begets Tyranny.

Marriage Is Like Retiring As A Bachelor And Getting A Sexual Pension. You Don't Have To Work For The Sex Any More, But You Only Get 65% As Much.

The True Nature Of Anything Is What It Becomes At Its Highest.

Man First Begins To Philosophize When The Necessities Of Life Are Supplied.

Conscientious And Careful Physicians Allocate Causes Of Disease To Natural Laws, While The Ablest Scientists Go Back To Medicine For Their First Principles.

Trending Author

Robert Grosseteste

Marion Cotillard

Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Pierre Bourdieu

Category