Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher, logician, and scientist. The founder of the science of logic, he made significant and lasting contributions to nearly every aspect of human knowledge. Aristotle is one of the most significant figures in philosophy—his achievement has been fundamental to the development of Western philosophy.
Born in the small Greek town of Stagiros, later Stagira, in Greek Macedonia, Aristotle joined Plato’s Academy at the age of 17. He remained there for 20 years, and even though his respect for Plato was always great, differences developed, which ultimately caused a rift.
After Plato’s death, Aristotle tutored the young Alexander the Great and founded the Lyceum school of philosophy outside Athens in 335 BCE. The Lyceum is the forerunner of modern educational and research institutions.
Aristotle is one of the most prominent thinkers in the history of Western thought. His work was fundamental to Islāmic and medieval Christian philosophy—in Arabic philosophy, he was known only as “The First Teacher;” and in the West, he was “The Philosopher.”
Aristotle produced a large number of writings, but comparatively few have survived. They cover nearly every branch of human knowledge—logic, ethics, metaphysics, politics, the weather, planetary motions, natural science, and physics. His principal works are the Organon (six treatises on logic and syllogism,) Politics (the conduct of the state,) Poetics (analysis of poetry and tragedy,) and Rhetoric.
Aristotle organized all the knowledge of his time into a coherent whole, which served as the basis for much of medieval science and philosophy. He espoused the principle of the golden mean (as did Confucius, independently) that the best path in life was the one between two extremes, or “moderation in all things.”
Following the decline of the Roman Empire, Aristotle was largely forgotten by the West. In the intervening time, he had a profound effect on the development of Islāmic philosophy. Islāmic scholarship eventually provided for medieval Christian scholasticism, and Aristotle’s scholarship was resurrected in particular through the work of Thomas Aquinas.
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Patience is so like fortitude that she seems either her sister or her daughter.
—Aristotle
Topics: Patience
Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient
—Aristotle
Topics: Happiness
Humans seek happiness as an end in itself, not as a means to something else.
—Aristotle
The life of children, as much as that of intemperate men, is wholly governed by their desires.
—Aristotle
Topics: Children
The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.
—Aristotle
Topics: Time, Youth
Quality is not an act. It is a habit.
—Aristotle
Topics: Habit, Quality, One liners, Habits
I say that habit’s but a long practice, friend, and this becomes men’s nature in the end.
—Aristotle
Topics: Habits
Happiness is activity.
—Aristotle
Topics: Happiness
Memory is the scribe of the soul.
—Aristotle
Topics: Memory
It is owing to their wonder that people both now begin and at first began to philosophize.
—Aristotle
Topics: Wonder, Knowledge
Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.
—Aristotle
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of the circumstances.
—Aristotle
Topics: Ideals, Acceptance, Bravery, Virtues, Courage
Between friends there is no need of justice.
—Aristotle
Topics: Friendship
Anything that we have to learn we learn by the actual doing of it… we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.
—Aristotle
Topics: Become, Ethics, Doing, Act, Learn
The soul never thinks without a mental picture.
—Aristotle
Topics: Soul, Vision
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
—Aristotle
Topics: Equality
Man is by nature a political animal.
—Aristotle
Topics: Humanity, Humankind, Nature
Life is full of chances and changes, and the most prosperous of men may … meet with great misfortunes.
—Aristotle
Topics: Luck, Fortune
No man loves the man he fears.
—Aristotle
Topics: Fear
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
—Aristotle
Topics: Punishment
Since we think we understand when we know the explanation, and there are four types of explanation (one, what it is to be a thing; one, that if certain things hold it is necessary that this does; another, what initiated the change; and fourth, the aim), all these are proved through the middle term.
—Aristotle
Topics: Explanation
No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.
—Aristotle
Topics: Responsibility
It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.
—Aristotle
Topics: Goodness
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
—Aristotle
Topics: Mothers Day, Mothers
The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
—Aristotle
Topics: Liberty
The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward.
—Aristotle
Topics: War, Brave, Coward
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
—Aristotle
Topics: Solitude
One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.
—Aristotle
Topics: Doing
The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want.
—Aristotle
Topics: Justice, Crime
Shame is an ornament to the young; a disgrace to the old.
—Aristotle
Topics: Shame
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