Aristotle (384BC – 322BC), Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist
Well begun is half done.
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way… you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.
We make war that we may live in peace.
I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.
Humour is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
Law is order, and good law is good order.
The whole heaven is number and harmony.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
Man is a rational animal.
It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
A friend is a second self.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
Dignity consists not in possessing honours, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
To perceive is to suffer.
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
Evil brings men together.
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.
It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.
To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.
We must as second best…take the least of the evils.
With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
In all things of nature there is something of the marvellous.
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
Man is by nature a political animal.
The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.
