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
They - Young People have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things - and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning - all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything - they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.
It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia.
One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.
The intention makes the crime.
People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life.
Whether we call it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls.
They who are to be judges must also be performers.
Human beings are curious by nature.
We deliberate not about ends, but about means.
In everything, it is no easy task to find the middle.
We must become just be doing just acts.
It is no easy task to be good.
If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.
Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.