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Yet The True Friend Of The People Should See That They Be Not Too Poor, For Extreme Povery Lowers The Character Of The Democracy; Measures Therefore Should Be Taken Which Will Give Them Lasting Prosperity; And As This Is Equally The Interest Of All Classes, The Proceeds Of The Public Revenues Should Be Accumulated And Distributed Among Its Poor, If Possible, In Such Quantities As May Enable Them To Purchase A Little Farm, Or, At Any Rate, Make A Beginning In Trade Or Husbandry.

-Aristotle

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Yet The True Friend

Aristotle

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Yet The True Friend Of The People Should See That They Be Not Too Poor, For Extreme Povery Lowers The Character Of The Democracy; Measures Therefore Should Be Taken Which Will Give Them Lasting Prosperity; And As This Is Equally The Interest Of All Classes, The Proceeds Of The Public Revenues Should Be Accumulated And Distributed Among Its Poor, If Possible, In Such Quantities As May Enable Them To Purchase A Little Farm, Or, At Any Rate, Make A Beginning In Trade Or Husbandry.

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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.

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.

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.

Now It Is Evident That The Form Of Government Is Best In Which Every Man, Whoever He Is, Can Act Best And Live Happily.

If You Would Understand Anything, Observe Its Beginning And Its Development

All Communication Must Lead To Change

The Most Beautiful Colors Laid On At Random, Give Less Pleasure Than A Black-and-white Drawing.

Black And White

Dignity Does Not Consist In Possessing Honors, But In Deserving Them.

So We Must Lay It Down That The Association Which Is A State Exists Not For The Purpose Of Living Together But For The Sake Of Noble Actions.

Injustice Results As Much From Treating Unequals Equally As From Treating Equals Unequally.

He Who Has Never Learned To Obey Cannot Be A Good Commander.

When Their Adventures Do Not Succeed, However, They Run Away; But It Was The Mark Of A Brave Man To Face Things That Are, And Seem, Terrible For A Man, Because It Is Noble To Do So And Disgraceful Not To Do So.

The Secret To Humor Is Surprise.

It Is Simplicity That Makes The Uneducated More Effective Than The Educated When Addressing Popular Audiences.

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

Meaning Of Life

The Argument Of Alcidamas: Everyone Honours The Wise. Thus The Parians Have Honoured Archilochus, In Spite Of His Bitter Tongue; The Chians Homer, Though He Was Not Their Countryman; The Mytilenaeans Sappho, Though She Was A Woman; The Lacedaemonians Actually Made Chilon A Member Of Their Senate, Though They Are The Least Literary Of Men; The Inhabitants Of Lampsacus Gave Public Burial To Anaxagoras, Though He Was An Alien, And Honour Him Even To This Day.

Greatness Of Soul Seems Therefore To Be As It Were A Crowning Ornament Of The Virtues; It Enhances Their Greatness, And It Cannot Exist Without Them. Hence It Is Hard To Be Truly Great-souled, For Greatness Of Soul Is Impossible Without Moral Nobility.

For Both Excessive And Insufficient Exercise Destroy One's Strength, And Both Eating And Drinking Too Much Or Too Little Destroy Health, Whereas The Right Quantity Produces, Increases And Preserves It. So It Is The Same With Temperance, Courage And The Other Virtues. This Much Then, Is Clear: In All Our Conduct It Is The Mean That Is To Be Commended.

A Man Can Make Up His Mind Quickly When He Has Only A Little To Make Up.

Civil Confusions Often Spring From Trifles But Decide Great Issues.

The Best Tragedies Are Conflicts Between A Hero And His Destiny.

If We State The Function Of Man To Be A Certain Kind Of Life, And This To Be An Activity Or Actions Of The Soul Implying A Rational Principle, And The Function Of A Good Man To Be The Good And Noble Performance Of These, And If Any Action Is Well Performed When It Is Performed In Accordance With The Appropriate Excellence Human Good Turns Out To Be Activity Of The Soul In Accordance With Virtue, And If There Are More Than One Virtue, In Accordance With The Best And Most Complete.

Think As Wise Men Do, But Speak As The Common People Do.

Gentleness Is The Ability To Bear Reproaches And Slights With Moderation, And Not To Embark On Revenge Quickly, And Not To Be Easily Provoked To Anger, But Be Free From Bitterness And Contentiousness, Having Tranquility And Stability In The Spirit.

Ancient Laws Remain In Force Long After The People Have The Power To Change Them.

The Greatest Thing By Far Is To Have A Command Of Metaphor. This Alone Cannot Be Imparted By Another; It Is The Mark Of Genius, For To Make Good Metaphors Implies An Eye For Resemblances.

Once More: There Are Three Offices According To Whose Directions The Highest Magistrates Are Chosen In Certain States - Guardians Of The Law, Probuli, Councilors - Of These, The Guardians Of The Law Are An Aristocratical, The Probuli An Oligarchical, The Council A Democratical Institution.

Before You Heal The Body You Must First Heal The Mind

. . . The Man Is Free, We Say, Who Exists For His Own Sake And Not For Another's.

Happiness Is Something Final And Complete In Itself, As Being The Aim And End Of All Practical Activities Whatever .... Happiness Then We Define As The Active Exercise Of The Mind In Conformity With Perfect Goodness Or Virtue.

Between Friends There Is No Need Of Justice.

He Is His Own Best Friend And Takes Delight In Privacy Whereas The Man Of No Virtue Or Ability Is His Own Worst Enemy And Is Afraid Of Solitude.

Worms Are The Intestines Of The Earth.

The Quality Of Life Is Determined By Its Activities.

No Science Ever Defends Its First Principles.

One Who Faces And Who Fears The Right Things And From The Right Motive, In The Right Way And At The Right Time, Posseses Character Worthy Of Our Trust And Admiration.

A Government Which Is Composed Of The Middle Class More Nearly Approximates To Democracy Than To Oligarchy, And Is The Safest Of The Imperfect Forms Of Government.

Error Is Multiform (for Evil Is A Form Of The Unlimited, As In The Old Pythagorean Imagery, And Good Of The Limited), Whereas Success Is Possible In One Way Only (which Is Why It Is Easy To Fail And Difficult To Succeed - Easy To Miss The Target And Difficult To Hit It); So This Is Another Reason Why Excess And Deficiency Are A Mark Of Vice, And Observance Of The Mean A Mark Of Virtue: Goodness Is Simple, Badness Is Manifold.

Demonstration Is Also Something Necessary, Because A Demonstration Cannot Go Otherwise Than It Does, ... And The Cause Of This Lies With The Primary Premises/principles.

Words Of Wisdom

There Are Some Jobs In Which It Is Impossible For A Man To Be Virtuous.

Phronimos, Possessing Practical Wisdom . But The Only Virtue Special To A Ruler Is Practical Wisdom; All The Others Must Be Possessed, So It Seems, Both By Rulers And Ruled. The Virtue Of A Person Being Ruled Is Not Practical Wisdom But Correct Opinion; He Is Rather Like A Person Who Makes The Pipes, While The Ruler Is The One Who Can Play Them.

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.

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

In The Case Of Some People, Not Even If We Had The Most Accurate Scientific Knowledge, Would It Be Easy To Persuade Them Were We To Address Them Through The Medium Of That Knowledge; For A Scientific Discourse, It Is The Privilege Of Education To Appreciate, And It Is Impossible That This Should Extend To The Multitude.

The Greater The Length, The More Beautiful Will The Piece Be By Reason Of Its Size, Provided That The Whole Be Perspicuous.

Hope Is A Waking Dream.

There Is Nothing Grand Or Noble In Having The Use Of A Slave, In So Far As He Is A Slave; Or In Issuing Commands About Necessary Things. But It Is An Error To Suppose That Every Sort Of Rule Is Despotic Like That Of A Master Over Slaves, For There Is As Great A Difference Between The Rule Over Freemen And The Rule Over Slaves As There Is Between Slavery By Nature And Freedom By Nature . .

Wonder Implies The Desire To Learn.

There Are Branches Of Learning And Education Which We Must Study Merely With A View To Leisure Spent In Intellectual Activity, And These Are To Be Valued For Their Own Sake; Whereas Those Kinds Of Knowledge Which Are Useful In Business Are To Be Deemed Necessary, And Exist For The Sake Of Other Things.

The Soul Of Animals Is Characterized By Two Faculties, (a) The Faculty Of Discrimination Which Is The Work Of Thought And Sense, And (b) The Faculty Of Originating Local Movement.

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.

Happiness Is An Expression Of The Soul In Considered Actions.

The Male Has More Teeth Than The Female In Mankind, And Sheep And Goats, And Swine. This Has Not Been Observed In Other Animals. Those Persons Which Have The Greatest Number Of Teeth Are The Longest Lived; Those Which Have Them Widely Separated, Smaller, And More Scattered, Are Generally More Short Lived.

The Best Political Community Is Formed By Citizens Of The Middle Class.

We Should Behave To Our Friends As We Would Wish Our Friends Behave To Us

Of Actions Some Aim At What Is Necessary And Useful, And Some At What Is Honorable. And The Preference Given To One Or The Other Class Of Actions Must Necessarily Be Like The Preference Given To One Or Other Part Of The Soul And Its Actions Over The Other; There Must Be War For The Sake Of Peace, Business For The Sake Of Leisure, Things Useful And Necessary For The Sake Of Things Honorable.

Art Is A Higher Type Of Knowledge Than Experience.

A Tragedy Is The Imitation Of An Action That Is Serious And Also, As Having Magnitude, Complete In Itself . . . With Incidents Arousing Pity And Fear, Wherewith To Accomplish Its Catharsis Of Such Emotions.

It Is The Activity Of The Intellect That Constitutes Complete Human Happiness - Provided It Be Granted A Complete Span Of Life, For Nothing That Belongs To Happiness Can Be Incomplete.

The One Exclusive Sign Of Thorough Knowledge Is The Power Of Teaching.

We Do Not Act Rightly Because We Have Virtue Or Excellence. But They Hesitate, Waiting For The Other Fellow To Make The First Move-and He, In Turn, Waits For You.

It Is Evident, Then, That There Is A Sort Of Education In Which Parents Should Train Their Sons, Not As Being Useful Or Necessary, But Because It Is Liberal Or Noble.

Equality Consists In The Same Treatment Of Similar Persons.

Equal Treatment

Where Your Talents And The Needs Of The World Cross; There Lies Your Vocation.

Fear Is Pain Arising From The Anticipation Of Evil.

He Who Cannot See The Truth For Himself, Nor, Hearing It From Others, Store It Away In His Mind, That Man Is Utterly Worthless.

Everything That Depends On The Action Of Nature Is By Nature As Good As It Can Be.

That The Equalization Of Property Exercises An Influence On Political Society Was Clearly Understood Even By Some Of The Old Legislators. Laws Were Made By Solon And Others Prohibiting An Individual From Possessing As Much Land As He Pleased.

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.

The High-minded Man Must Care More For The Truth Than For What People Think.

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.

Good Laws, If They Are Not Obeyed, Do Not Constitute Good Government.

As Our Acts Vary, Our Habits Will Follow In Their Course.

All Proofs Rest On Premises.

When We Deliberate It Is About Means And Not Ends.

The Coward Calls The Brave Man Rash, The Rash Man Calls Him A Coward.

The Soul Has Two Parts, One Rational And The Other Irrational. Let Us Now Similarly Divide The Rational Part, And Let It Be Assumed That There Are Two Rational Faculties, One Whereby We Contemplate Those Things Whose First Principles Are Invariable, And One Whereby We Contemplate Those Things Which Admit Of Variation.

A Common Danger Unites Even The Bitterest Enemies.

We Are What We Repeatedly Do... Excellence, Therefore, Isn't Just An Act, But A Habit And Life Isn't Just A Series Of Events, But An Ongoing Process Of Self-definition.

There Are Three Things That Are The Motives Of Choice And Three That Are The Motives Of Avoidance; Namely, The Noble, The Expedient, And The Pleasant, And Their Opposites, The Base, The Harmful, And The Painful. Now In Respect Of All These The Good Man Is Likely To Go Right And The Bad To Go Wrong, But Especially In Respect Of Pleasure; For Pleasure Is Common To Man With The Lower Animals, And Also It Is A Concomitant Of All The Objects Of Choice, Since Both The Noble And The Expedient Appear To Us Pleasant.

When The Looms Spin By Themselves, We'll Have No Need For Slaves.

Those Who Assert That The Mathematical Sciences Say Nothing Of The Beautiful Or The Good Are In Error. For These Sciences Say And Prove A Great Deal About Them; If They Do Not Expressly Mention Them, But Prove Attributes Which Are Their Results Or Definitions, It Is Not True That They Tell Us Nothing About Them. The Chief Forms Of Beauty Are Order And Symmetry And Definiteness, Which The Mathematical Sciences Demonstrate In A Special Degree.

My Lectures Are Published And Not Published; They Will Be Intelligible To Those Who Heard Them, And To None Beside.

Educating The Mind Without Educating The Heart Is No Education At All.

In A Word, Acts Of Any Kind Produce Habits Or Characters Of The Same Kind. Hence We Ought To Make Sure That Our Acts Are Of A Certain Kind; For The Resulting Character Varies As They Vary. It Makes No Small Difference, Therefore, Whether A Man Be Trained In His Youth Up In This Way Or That, But A Great Difference, Or Rather All The Difference.

Not To Get What You Have Set Your Heart On Is Almost As Bad As Getting Nothing At All.

It Is Of Itself That The Divine Thought Thinks (since It Is The Most Excellent Of Things), And Its Thinking Is A Thinking On Thinking.

Distance Does Not Break Off The Friendship Absolutely, But Only The Activity Of It.

Long Distance Relationship

Self-sufficiency Is Both A Good And An Absolute Good.

The Knowledge Of The Soul Admittedly Contributes Greatly To The Advance Of Truth In General, And, Above All, To Our Understanding Of Nature, For The Soul Is In Some Sense The Principle Of Animal Life.

We Are Better Able To Study Our Neighbours Than Ourselves, And Their Actions Than Our Own.

Teachers, Who Educate Children, Deserve More Honour Than Parents, Who Merely Gave Them Birth; For The Latter Provided Mere Life, While The Former Ensure A Good Life.

Misfortune Shows Those Who Are Not Really Friends.

It Is The Mark Of An Educated Mind To Be Able To Entertain A Thought Without Accepting It.

There Is Nothing Unequal As The Equal Treatment Of Unequals.

Equal Treatment

People Become House Builders Through Building Houses, Harp Players Through Playing The Harp. We Grow To Be Just By Doing Things Which Are Just.

Building Houses

We Become Just By The Practice Of Just Actions.

If 'bounded By A Surface' Is The Definition Of Body There Cannot Be An Infinite Body Either Intelligible Or Sensible.

They - Young People Have Exalted Notions, Because They Have Not Been Humbled By Life Or Learned Its Necessary Limitations; Moreover, Their Hopeful Disposition Makes Them Think Themselves Equal To Great Things - And That Means Having Exalted Notions. They Would Always Rather Do Noble Deeds Than Useful Ones: Their Lives Are Regulated More By Moral Feeling Than By Reasoning - All Their Mistakes Are In The Direction Of Doing Things Excessively And Vehemently. They Overdo Everything - They Love Too Much, Hate Too Much, And The Same With Everything Else.

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.

Men Regard It As Their Right To Return Evil For Evil And, If They Cannot, Feel They Have Lost Their Liberty.

All Friendly Feelings Toward Others Come From The Friendly Feelings A Person Has For Himself.

In Most Constitutional States The Citizens Rule And Are Ruled By Turns, For The Idea Of A Constitutional State Implies That The Natures Of The Citizens Are Equal, And Do Not Differ At All.

It Is No Easy Task To Be Good.

We Must Speak First About The Division Of Land And About Those Who Cultivate It: Who Should They Be And What Kind Of Person? We Do Not Agree With Those Who Have Said That Property Should Be Communally Owned, But We Do Believe That There Should Be A Friendly Arrangement For Its Common Use, And That None Of The Citizens Should Be Without Means Of Support.

Art Takes Nature As Its Model.

The Art Of Wealth-getting Which Consists In Household Management, On The One Hand, Has A Limit; The Unlimited Acquisition Of Wealth Is Not Its Business. And Therefore, In One Point Of View, All Riches Must Have A Limit; Nevertheless, As A Matter Of Fact, We Find The Opposite To Be The Case; For All Getters Of Wealth Increase Their Hard Coin Without Limit.

This World Is Inescapably Linked To The Motions Of The Worlds Above. All Power In This World Is Ruled By These Options.

If There Is Some End Of The Things We Do, Which We Desire For Its Own Sake, Clearly This Must Be The Good. Will Not Knowledge Of It, Then, Have A Great Influence On Life? Shall We Not, Like Archers Who Have A Mark To Aim At, Be More Likely To Hit Upon What We Should? If So, We Must Try, In Outline At Least, To Determine What It Is.

Money Originated With Royalty And Slavery, It Has Nothing To Do With Democracy Or The Struggle Of The Empoverished Enslaved Majority.

Our Characters Are The Result Of Our Conduct.

We Should Aim Rather At Leveling Down Our Desires Than Leveling Up Our Means.

When The Storytelling Goes Bad In A Society, The Result Is Decadence.

Youth Is Easily Deceived Because It Is Quick To Hope.

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.

The Ideal Man Takes Joy In Doing Favors For Others.

Anything Whose Presence Or Absence Makes No Discernible Difference Is No Essential Part Of The Whole.

Men Cling To Life Even At The Cost Of Enduring Great Misfortune.

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

To The Sober Person Adventurous Conduct Often Seems Insanity.

The Avarice Of Mankind Is Insatiable.

[hope Is] The Dream Of A Waking Man.

Funny Inspirational

Imagination Is A Sort Of Faint Perception.

The Self-indulgent Man Craves For All Pleasant Things... And Is Led By His Appetite To Choose These At The Cost Of Everything Else.

The Virtues [moral Excellence] Therefore Are Engendered In Us Neither By Nature Nor Yet In Violation Of Nature; Nature Gives Us The Capacity To Receive Them, And This Capacity Is Brought To Maturity By Habit.

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.

Metaphysics Involves Intuitive Knowledge Of Unprovable Starting-points Concepts And Truth And Demonstrative Knowledge Of What Follows From Them.

Words Of Wisdom

We Ought Not To Listen To Those Who Exhort Us, Because We Are Human, To Think Of Human Things....we Ought Rather To Take On Immortality As Much As Possible, And Do All That We Can To Live In Accordance With The Highest Element Within Us; For Even If Its Bulk Is Small, In Its Power And Value It Far Exceeds Everything.

Those That Deem Politics Beneath Their Dignity Are Doomed To Be Governed By Those Of Lesser Talents.

The Ultimate Value Of Life Depends Upon Awareness And The Power Of Contemplation Rather Than Upon Mere Survival.

Every Effort Therefore Must Be Made To Perpetuate Prosperity. And, Since That Is To The Advantage Of The Rich As Well As The Poor, All That Accrues From The Revenues Should Be Collected Into A Single Fund And Distributed In Block Grants To Those In Need, If Possible In Lump Sums Large Enough For The Acquisition Of A Small Piece Of Land, But If Not, Enough To Start A Business, Or Work In Agriculture. And If That Cannot Be Done For All, The Distribution Might Be By Tribes Or Some Other Division Each In Turn.

Think As The Wise Men Think, But Talk Like The Simple People Do.

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

The Society That Loses Its Grip On The Past Is In Danger, For It Produces Men Who Know Nothing But The Present, And Who Are Not Aware That Life Had Been, And Could Be, Different From What It Is.

Pleasure Causes Us To Do Base Actions And Pain Causes Us To Abstain From Doing Noble Actions.

He Who Is To Be A Good Ruler Must Have First Been Ruled.

The End Is Included Among Goods Of The Soul, And Not Among External Goods.

A Whole Is That Which Has A Beginning, A Middle And An End.

For Imagining Lies Within Our Power Whenever We Wish . . . But In Forming Opinons We Are Not Free . . .

But Then In What Way Are Things Called Good? They Do Not Seem To Be Like The Things That Only Chance To Have The Same Name. Are Goods One Then By Being Derived From One Good Or By All Contributing To One Good, Or Are They Rather One By Analogy? Certainly As Sight Is In The Body, So Is Reason In The Soul, And So On In Other Cases.

Opinion Involves Belief (for Without Belief In What We Opine We Cannot Have An Opinion), And In The Brutes Though We Often Find Imagination We Never Find Belief.

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 Greatest Virtues Are Those Which Are Most Useful To Other Persons.

The Greatest Crimes Are Caused By Surfeit, Not By Want.

The Ensouled Is Distinguished From The Unsouled By Its Being Alive. Now Since Being Alive Is Spoken Of In Many Ways, Even If Only One Of These Is Present, We Say That The Thing Is Alive, If, For Instance, There Is Intellect Or Perception Or Spatial Movement And Rest Or Indeed Movement Connected With Nourishment And Growth And Decay. It Is For This Reason That All The Plants Are Also Held To Be Alive . . .

Bad People...are In Conflict With Themselves; They Desire One Thing And Will Another, Like The Incontinent Who Choose Harmful Pleasures Instead Of What They Themselves Believe To Be Good.

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.

The Ridiculous Is Produced By Any Defect That Is Unattended By Pain, Or Fatal Consequences; Thus, An Ugly And Deformed Countenance Does Not Fail To Cause Laughter, If It Is Not Occasioned By Pain.

Democracy Arises Out Of The Notion That Those Who Are Equal In Any Respect Are Equal In All Respects; Because Men Are Equally Free, They Claim To Be Absolutely Equal.

Philosophy Is The Science Which Considers Truth.

The Two Qualities Which Chiefly Inspire Regard And Affection Are That A Thing Is Your Own And That It Is Your Only One.

There Is Honor In Being A Dog.

The Goodness Or Badness, Justice Or Injustice, Of Laws Varies Of Necessity With The Constitution Of States. This, However, Is Clear, That The Laws Must Be Adapted To The Constitutions. But If So, True Forms Of Government Will Of Necessity Have Just Laws, And Perverted Forms Of Government Will Have Unjust Laws.

If Every Tool, When Ordered, Or Even Of Its Own Accord, Could Do The Work That Befits It... Then There Would Be No Need Either Of Apprentices For The Master Workers Or Of Slaves For The Lords.

As To Adultery, Let It Be Held Disgraceful, In General, For Any Man Or Woman To Be Found In Any Way Unfaithful When They Are Married, And Called Husband And Wife. If During The Time Of Bearing Children Anything Of The Sort Occur, Let The Guilty Person Be Punished With A Loss Of Privileges In Proportion To The Offense.

The Probable Is What Usually Happens.

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

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

The Greatest Of All Pleasures Is The Pleasure Of Learning.

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.

If, Therefore, There Is Any One Superior In Virtue And In The Power Of Performing The Best Actions, Him We Ought To Follow And Obey, But He Must Have The Capacity For Action As Well As Virtue.

Peace Is More Difficult Than War.

Anyone, Without Any Great Penetration, May Distinguish The Dispositions Consequent On Wealth; For Its Possessors Are Insolent And Overbearing, From Being Tainted In A Certain Way By The Getting Of Their Wealth. For They Are Affected As Though They Possessed Every Good; Since Wealth Is A Sort Of Standard Of The Worth Of Other Things; Whence Every Thing Seems To Be Purchasable By It.

My Best Friend Is The Man Who In Wishing Me Well Wishes It For My Sake.

The Pleasures Arising From Thinking And Learning Will Make Us Think And Learn All The More. 1153a 23

Nicomachean Ethics

Finally, If Nothing Can Be Truly Asserted, Even The Following Claim Would Be False, The Claim That There Is No True Assertion.

Men Must Be Able To Engage In Business And Go To War, But Leisure And Peace Are Better; They Must Do What Is Necessary And Indeed What Is Useful, But What Is Honorable Is Better. On Such Principles Children And Persons Of Every Age Which Requires Education Should Be Trained.

When We Look At The Matter From Another Point Of View, Great Caution Would Seem To Be Required. For The Habit Of Lightly Changing The Laws Is An Evil, And, When The Advantage Is Small, Some Errors Both Of Lawgivers And Rulers Had Better Be Left; The Citizen Will Not Gain So Much By Making The Change As He Will Lose By The Habit Of Disobedience.

That Which Most Contributes To The Permanence Of Constitutions Is The Adaptation Of Education To The Form Of Government, And Yet In Our Own Day This Principle Is Universally Neglected. The Best Laws, Though Sanctioned By Every Citizen Of The State, Will Be Of No Avail Unless The Young Are Trained By Habit And Education In The Spirit Of The Constitution.

Most Persons Think That A State In Order To Be Happy Ought To Be Large; But Even If They Are Right, They Have No Idea Of What Is A Large And What A Small State.... To The Size Of States There Is A Limit, As There Is To Other Things, Plants, Animals, Implements; For None Of These Retain Their Natural Power When They Are Too Large Or Too Small, But They Either Wholly Lose Their Nature, Or Are Spoiled.

A Fool Contributes Nothing Worth Hearing And Takes Offense At Everything.

Our Feelings Towards Our Friends Reflect Our Feelings Towards Ourselves.

Why Do Men Seek Honour? Surely In Order To Confirm The Favorable Opinion They Have Formed Of Themselves.

Patience Is So Like Fortitude That She Seems Either Her Sister Or Her Daughter.

There Are, Then, Three States Of Mind ... Two Vices--that Of Excess, And That Of Defect; And One Virtue--the Mean; And All These Are In A Certain Sense Opposed To One Another; For The Extremes Are Not Only Opposed To The Mean, But Also To One Another; And The Mean Is Opposed To The Extremes.

Jealousy Is Both Reasonable And Belongs To Reasonable Men, While Envy Is Base And Belongs To The Base, For The One Makes Himself Get Good Things By Jealousy, While The Other Does Not Allow His Neighbour To Have Them Through Envy.

There Is Only One Condition In Which We Can Imagine Managers Not Needing Subordinates, And Masters Not Needing Slaves. This Condition Would Be That Each (inanimate) Instrument Could Do Its Own Work.

Happiness Involves Engagement In Activities That Promote One's Highest Potentials.

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.

It Will Contribute Towards One's Object, Who Wishes To Acquire A Facility In The Gaining Of Knowledge, To Doubt Judiciously.

A Likely Impossibility Is Always Preferable To An Unconvincing Possibility.

Human Good Turns Out To Be Activity Of Soul Exhibiting Excellence, And If There Is More Than One Sort Of Excellence, In Accordance With The Best And Most Complete.foroneswallowdoesnot Makea Summer, Nor Does One Day; And So Too One Day, Or A Short Time, Does Not Make A Man Blessed And Happy.

It Is Absurd To Hold That A Man Ought To Be Ashamed Of Being Unable To Defend Himself With His Limbs, But Not Of Being Unable To Defend Himself With Speech And Reason, When The Use Of Rational Speech Is More Distinctive Of A Human Being Than The Use Of His Limbs.

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.

Philosophy Begins With Wonder.

A Flatterer Is A Friend Who Is Your Inferior, Or Pretends To Be So.

We Make War That We May Live In Peace.

All Art, All Education, Can Be Merely A Supplement To Nature.

We Are The Sum Of Our Actions, And Therefore Our Habits Make All The Difference.

It Is True, Indeed, That The Account Plato Gives In 'timaeus' Is Different From What He Says In His So-called 'unwritten Teachings.'

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

The Soul Is Characterized By These Capacities; Self-nutrition, Sensation, Thinking, And Movement.

In The Human Species At All Events There Is A Great Diversity Of Pleasures. The Same Things Delight Some Men And Annoy Others, And Things Painful And Disgusting To Some Are Pleasant And Attractive To Others.

Of The Irrational Part Of The Soul Again One Division Appears To Be Common To All Living Things, And Of A Vegetative Nature.

Thus Then A Single Harmony Orders The Composition Of The Whole...by The Mingling Of The Most Contrary Principles.

Not To Know Of What Things One Should Demand Demonstration, And Of What One Should Not, Argues Want Of Education.

If The Art Of Ship-building Were In The Wood, Ships Would Exist By Nature.

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

The Line Between Lawful And Unlawful Abortion Will Be Marked By The Fact Of Having Sensation And Being Alive.

All Persons Ought To Endeavor To Follow What Is Right, And Not What Is Established.

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