100 Quotes About Aristotle

Any polis which is truly so called, and is not merely one in name, must devote itself to the end of encouraging goodness. Otherwise, political association sinks into a mere alliance.

History, people like to say, is written by the winners. The truth is, some of the most profound works on the past were written by those who considered themselves history's losers.

I was told, and indeed I saw several examples, that neither time nor place was much minded, and that I might hazard being equally careless of chronology and geography; but I piqued myself on having studied Aristotle, and scrupulously attended to the probabilities of time and place.

Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

Poetry, huh? Isn’t that what the very best writing is, in some way or another? Aristotle laid it out in his Poetics, poetic in itself. Dante, first and foremost a poet, invented a language for heaven’s sake. Then there’s Shakespeare, every bit the poet that he was dramatist.

There is a reference in Aristotle to a gnat produced by larvae engendered in the slime of vinegar. This must have been Drosophila.

Those who listened to the teachings of Socrates became the best philosophers. But those who studied under Plato, relied more on the rhetorical path and therefore, the greatest opportunists.

Entertain every idea that entertains you. To be entertained by an idea is to examine it in the context of your own engaged presence.