Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, whereafter Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. At eighteen, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPhilosopher
Friends are much better tried in bad fortune than in good.
As often as we do good, we offer sacrifices to God.
That rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects.
When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.
We are better able to study our neighbors than ourselves, and their actions than our own.
When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.
The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.
It is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny.
Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.
Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.
Every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice.
Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.
True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.
The saying of Protagoras is like the views we have mentioned; he said that man is the measure of all things, meaning simply that that which seems to each man assuredly is. If this is so, it follows that the same thing both is and is not, and is bad and good, and that the contents of all other opposite statements are true, because often a particular thing appears beautiful to some and ugly to others, and that which appears to each man is the measure