Book detail: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
The Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2 includes translations of various treatises and dialogues, showcasing Aristotle's philosophical and scientific thought. This revised Oxford translation is renowned for its accuracy and scholarly depth.
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“Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. .”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, private; for, when every one has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“There is an error common to both oligarchies and to democracies: in the latter the demagogues, when the multitude are above the law, are always cutting the city in two by quarrels with the rich, whereas they should always profess to be maintaining their cause; just as in oligarchies the oligarchs should profess to maintain the cause of the people, . .”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both will coincide.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Nature herself, as has been often said, requires that we should be able, not only to work well, but to use leisure well; for, as I must repeat once again, the first principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation and is its end.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Take the case of just actions; just punishments and chastisements do indeed spring from a good principle, but they are good only because we cannot do without them - it would be better that neither individuals nor states should need anything of the sort - but actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Of actions some aim at what is necessary and useful, and some at what is honorable. And the preference given to one or the other class of actions must necessarily be like the preference given to one or other part of the soul and its actions over the other; there must be war for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things useful and necessary for the sake of things honorable.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Because the rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the government. Hence arises the common opinion that there are two kinds of government - democracy and oligarchy.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training, to be among the most god-like things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something god-like and blessed.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any general principle embracing all particulars.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Now the soul of man is divided into two parts, one of which has a rational principle in itself, and the other, not having a rational principle in itself, is able to obey such a principle. And we call a man in any way good because he has the virtues of these two parts.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The first principle of all action is leisure.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“What we know is not capable of being otherwise; of things capable of being otherwise we do not know, when they have passed outsideour observation, whether they exist or not. Therefore the object of knowledge is of necessity. Therefore it is eternal; for things that are of necessity in the unqualified sense are all eternal; and things that are eternal are ungenerated and imperishable.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end that is aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“But then in what way are things called good? They do not seem to be like the things that only chance to have the same name. Are goods one then by being derived from one good or by all contributing to one good, or are they rather one by analogy? Certainly as sight is in the body, so is reason in the soul, and so on in other cases.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“All art is concerned with coming into being.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“One kind of justice is that which is manifested in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution ... and another kind is that which plays a rectifying part in transactions.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Man's best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“All art is concerned with coming into being; for it is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“They should rule who are able to rule best.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Those who are not angry at the things they should be angry at are thought to be fools, and so are those who are not angry in the right way, at the right time, or with the right persons.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“When their adventures do not succeed, however, they run away; but it was the mark of a brave man to face things that are, and seem, terrible for a man, because it is noble to do so and disgraceful not to do so.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“A common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The argument of Alcidamas: Everyone honours the wise. Thus the Parians have honoured Archilochus, in spite of his bitter tongue; the Chians Homer, though he was not their countryman; the Mytilenaeans Sappho, though she was a woman; the Lacedaemonians actually made Chilon a member of their senate, though they are the least literary of men; the inhabitants of Lampsacus gave public burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even to this day.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
“The same thing may have all the kinds of causes, e.g. the moving cause of a house is the art or the builder, the final cause is the function it fulfils, the matter is earth and stones, and the form is the definitory formula.”
Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation