Aristotle
384 BC–322 BC
Greek philosopher Aristotle, a pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great, authored works on ethics, natural sciences, politics, and poetics that profoundly influenced western thought; empirical observation precedes theory, and the syllogism bases logic, the essential method of rational inquiry in his system, which led him to see and to criticize metaphysical excesses.
Empirical, scientific, or commonsensical methods of an Aristotelian, also Aristotelean, a person, tends to think. Deductive method, especially the theory of the syllogism, defines Aristotelian logic. The formal logic, based on that of Aristotle, deals with the relations between propositions in terms of their form instead of their content.
German religious philosopher Saint Albertus Magnus later sought to apply his methods to current scientific questions. Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most influential thinker of the medieval period, combined doctrine of Aristotle within a context of Christianity.
Aristotle numbers among the greatest of all time. Almost peerless, he shaped centuries from late antiquity through the Renaissance, and people even today continue to study him with keen, non-antiquarian interest. This prodigious researcher and writer left a great body, perhaps numbering as many as two hundred treatises, from which 31 survive. His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines from mind through aesthetics and rhetoric and into such primary fields as biology; he excelled at detailed plant and animal taxonomy. In all these topics, he provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership.
Wide range and its remoteness in time defies easy encapsulation. The long history of interpretation and appropriation of texts and themes, spanning over two millennia within a variety of religious and secular traditions, rendered controversial even basic points of interpretation.
“The more you know, the more you know you don't know.”
“For the activity of the mind is life”
“Nobody will be afraid who believes nothing can happen to him.”
“It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.”
“Justice is the loveliest and health is the best, but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire.”
“The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.” (VII)”
“Nothing is what rocks dream about”
“Evil brings men together.”
“Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas”
“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”
“With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.”
“The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.”
“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”
“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”
“The female is, as it were, a mutilated male, and the catamenia are semen, only not pure; for there is only one thing they have not in them, the principle of soul.”
“Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder.”
“habits of virtue and vice are caused by acts”
“The void is 'not-being,' and no part of 'what is' is a 'not-being,'; for what 'is' in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not 'one': on the contrary, it is a 'many' infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk.”
“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”
“The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either.”
“Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God”
“The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.”
“The poet's function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e., what is possible as being probable or necessary...Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
“Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing.”
“Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.”
“Whatever lies within our power to do lies also within our power not to do.”
“If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development”
“He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”
“The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook”
“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.”
“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ”
“Choice not chance determines your destiny[my family motto...credited to Aristotle]”
“Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.”
“PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION.”
“By myth I mean the arrangement of the incidents”
“The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.”
“he who had never learned to obey cannot be a good commander”
“A courageous person is one who faces fearful things as he ought and as reason directs for the sake of what is noble.”
“All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world”
“A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.”
“History describes what has happened, poetry what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.”
“Anything whose presence or absence makes no discernible difference is no essential part of the whole.”
“We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends behave to us”
“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
“Nós nos transformamos naquilo que praticamos com frequência.A perfeição, portanto, não é um ato isolado. É um hábito.”
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
“Co svou přítomností nebo nepřítomností nepůsobí pražádný patrný rozdíl, není důležitou částí celku.”
“The gods too are fond of a joke.”
“What is the Good for man? It must be the ultimate end or object of human life: something that is in itself completely satisfying. Happiness fits this description…we always choose it for itself, and never for any other reason.”
“We must not listen to those who advise us 'being men to think human thoughts, and being mortal to think mortal thoughts' but must put on immortality as much as possible and strain every nerve to live according to that best part of us, which, being small in bulk, yet much more in its power and honour surpasses all else.”