Aristotle ( 384–322 BC) was an ancient 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 seventeen or eighteen years of age, 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 of Western philosophy. Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC.( from Wikipedia)
VARIOUS QUOTES BY ARISTOTLE
“Character is determined by choice, not opinion” – Aristotle
“Business or toil is merely utilitarian. It is necessary but does not enrich or ennoble a human life”- Aristotle
“He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander” – Aristotle
“Friends hold a mirror up to each other; through that mirror they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them, and it is this mirroring that helps them improve themselves as persons” – Aristotle
“Be a free thinker and don’t accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in” -Aristotle
“Happiness is a quality of the soul…not a function of one’s material circumstances” – Aristotle
“The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want” – Aristotle
“The society that loses its grip on the past is in danger, for it produces men who know nothing but the present, and who are not aware that life had been, and could be, different from what it is” – Aristotle
“And of course, the brain is not responsible for any of the sensations at all. The correct view is that the seat and source of sensation is the region of the heart” – Aristotle
“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing” – Aristotle
“Think as the wise men think, but talk like the simple people do” -Aristotle
“The most important relationship we can all have is the one you have with yourself, the most important journey you can take is one of self-discovery. To know yourself, you must spend time with yourself, you must not be afraid to be alone. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”- Aristotle
“Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief ”- Aristotle
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” – Aristotle
“Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers” – Aristotle
“Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms” – Aristotle
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime” – Aristotle
“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor” – Aristotle
“At the intersection where your gifts, talents, and abilities meet a human need; therein you will discover your purpose”- Aristotle
“Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Give a man a poisoned fish, you feed him for the rest of his life” – Aristotle
“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” -Aristotle
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self” – Aristotle
“Both Self-restraint and Unrestraint are a matter of extremes as compared with the character of the mass of mankind; the restrained man shows more and the unrestrained man less steadfastness than most men are capable of ” – Aristotle
