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
When the looms spin by themselves, we'll have no need for slaves.
The rattle is a toy suited to the infant mind, and education is a rattle or toy for children of larger growth.
Excellence is not an art. It is the habit of practice.
It seems that ambition makes most people wish to be loved rather than to love others.
There is no such thing as committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, for it is simply WRONG.
We are what we repeatedly do... excellence, therefore, isn't just an act, but a habit and life isn't just a series of events, but an ongoing process of self-definition.
Emotions of any kind are produced by melody and rhythm; therefore by music a man becomes accustomed to feeling the right emotions; music has thus the power to form character, and the various kinds of music based on various modes may be distinguished by their effects on character.
Hence both women and children must be educated with an eye to the constitution, if indeed it makes any difference to the virtue of a city-state that its children be virtuous, and its women too. And it must make a difference, since half the free population are women, and from children come those who participate in the constitution.
Selfishness doesn't consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love.
The best way to avoid envy is to deserve the success you get.
The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself.
People do not naturally become morally excellent or practically wise. They become so, if at all, only as the result of lifelong personal and community effort.
Think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.
We can't learn without pain.