30 Aristotle Quotes

* There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

* Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

* We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

* Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

* 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 aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

* In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

* Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

* We make war that we may live in peace.

* The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

* At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

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

* The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

* Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

* Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.

* Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

* Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.

* The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

* Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

* There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

* In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

* The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

* We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

* Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

* Man is by nature a political animal.

* Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

* Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.