“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“Man is by nature a political animal.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“They who love in excess also hate in excess.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“Yes the truth is that men's ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“the greater the number of owners, the less the respect for common property. People are much more careful of their personal possessions than of those owned communally; they exercise care over common property only in so far as they are personally affected.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“To seek for utility everywhere is entirely unsuited to men that are great-souled and free.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“Now it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“The best man, then, must legislate, and laws must be passed, but these laws will have no authority when they miss the mark, though in all other cases retaining their authority. But when the law cannot determine a point at all, or not well, should the one best man or should all decide? According to our present practice assemblies meet, sit in judgment, deliberate, and decide, and their judgments an relate to individual cases. Now any member of the assembly, taken separately, is certainly inferior to the wise man. But the state is made up of many individuals. And as a feast to which all the guests contribute is better than a banquet furnished by a single man, so a multitude is a better judge of many things than any individual.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“...it is all wrong that a person who is going to be deemed worthy of the office should himself solicit it... for no one who is not ambitious would ask to hold office.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for in general faction arises from men's striving for what is equal.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“....governments, which have a regard to the common interest, are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“ Man is a political animal. A man who lives alone is either a Beast or a God”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one, whom Homer denounces — the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“But to be constantly asking ‘What is the use of it?’ is unbecoming to those of broad vision and unworthy of free men.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“Not in depraved things,
but in those well oriented according to nature,
are we to consider what is natural.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“the first principle of all action is leisure.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“Again, it is for the sake of the soul that goods external and goods of the body are eligible at all, and all wise men ought to choose them for the sake of the soul, and not the soul for the sake of them.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“for nobility is excellence of race.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“The deficiencies of nature are what art and education seek to fill up.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“the use of music for intellectual enjoyment in leisure;”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
“A straight nose is the most beautiful, but one that deviates from being straight and tends toward being hooked or snub can nevertheless still be beautiful to look at. Yet if it is tightened still more toward the extreme, [25] the part will first be thrown out of due proportion, and in the end it will cease to look like a nose at all, because it has too much of one and too little of the other of these opposites.”
― Aristotle, quote from Politics
Aristotle
Born place: in Stageira, Greece
Born date February 16, 0384
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“Most men will not swim before they are able to.” Is that not witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they wont think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.”
― Hermann Hesse, quote from Steppenwolf
“And at the word alone, Will felt a great wave of rage and despair moving outwards from a place deep within him, as if his mind were an ocean that some profound convulsion had disturbed. All his life he'd been alone, and now he must be alone again, and this infinitely precious blessing that had come to him must be taken away almost at once.He felt the wave build higher and steeper to darken the sky, he felt the crest tremble and begin to spill, he felt the great mass crashing down with the whole weight of the ocean behind it against the iron-bound coast of what had to be. And he felt himself crying aloud with more anger and pain than he had ever felt in his life, and he found Lyra just as helpless in his arms. But as the wave expended its force and the waters withdrew, the bleak rocks remained; there was no arguing with fate; neither his despair nor Lyra's had moved them a single inch.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Amber Spyglass
“Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.”
― Truman Capote, quote from Breakfast at Tiffany's
“...I should always find, the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on one hand, or by hard labor, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life...”
― Daniel Defoe, quote from Robinson Crusoe
“He is, most of all, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from Inferno
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The Only Pirate at t...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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