Aristotle Quotes
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath born in Stagira in 384 BC. A student of Plato and tutor to Alexander the Great, he founded the Peripatetic school at the Lyceum in Athens. The quotes below are attributed to Aristotle, organized by topic.
Browse Aristotle by topic
Aristotle on Happiness
-
Attributed to Aristotle:
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
-
Attributed to Aristotle:
“Happiness is found to be something perfect and self-sufficient, being the end to which our actions are directed.”
Aristotle on Knowledge
-
“All men by nature desire to know.”
Metaphysics Book I, 980a.21 : Opening paragraph of Metaphysics | Variant: All men by nature desire knowledge. | The first sentence is in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:10 -
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers -
“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history, for poetry expresses the universal and history only the particular.”
διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ποίησις μᾶλλον τὰ καθόλου, ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία τὰ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον λέγει. -
Attributed to Aristotle:
“Education is the best provision for old age.”
-
“My lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside.”
Letter to Alexander the Great as quoted by William Whewell , History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), Ch. 2, Sect. 2 -
“Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being affected . To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the market-place; of when: yesterday, last-year; of being-in-a-position: is-lying, is sitting; of having: has-shoes-on, has-armour-on; of doing: cutting, burning; of being-affected: being-cut, being-burned.”
1b25-2a10; J. L. Ackrill (tr.), 1984-1995 -
“1b25-2a10; J. L. Ackrill (tr.), 1984-1995”
Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being affected . To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the mark -
“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.”
I.13 , 78a.22 -
“Also known as Occam's razor or the principle of parsimony / economy ( lex parsimoniae )”
We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses—in short from fewer premisses; for... given that all these are equally well known, where they are fewer knowledge will be more speedily acquired, and that is a desideratum . The argument implied in our contention that demonstration from fewer assumptions is -
“We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses—in short from fewer premisses; for... given that all these are equally well known, where they are fewer knowledge will be more speedily acquired, and that is a desideratum . The argument implied in our contention that demonstration from fewer assumptions is ”
Richard McKeon (tr.) (1963), p. 150
Aristotle on Life
-
“Hope is the dream of a waking man.”
p. 187 -
Attributed to Aristotle:
“The end of labour is to gain leisure.”
Aristotle on Love
-
“Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.
Aristotle on Mind
-
Attributed to Aristotle:
“The soul never thinks without a picture.”
Aristotle on Nature
-
Attributed to Aristotle:
“Nature does nothing in vain.”
-
“Nature does not do anything in vain .”
Wikiquote -
“The science which has to do with nature clearly concerns itself for the most part with bodies and magnitudes and their properties and movements, but also with the principles of this sort of substance, as many as they may be.”
On the Heavens Book I, pg. 1 ( 350 BCE )
Aristotle on Politics
-
Attributed to Aristotle:
“Man is by nature a political animal.”
Aristotle on Truth
-
“Liars, when they speak the truth, are not believed.”
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers -
“Philosophy is the science of truth.”
Wikiquote
Aristotle on Virtue
-
Attributed to Aristotle:
“The good for man is an activity of the soul in conformity with virtue.”
-
“Anyone can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὸ μὲν ὀργισθῆναι παντὸς καὶ ῥᾴδιον, καὶ τὸ δοῦναι ἀργύριον καὶ δαπανῆσαι· τὸ δ᾽ ᾧ καὶ ὅσον καὶ ὅτε καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα καὶ ὥς, οὐκέτι παντὸς οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον
Things actually not said by Aristotle
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Aristotle but are in fact from someone else. Did Aristotle say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Will Durant wrote this in his 1926 book The Story of Philosophy as his own one-sentence paraphrase summarizing Aristotle's discussion of habit and moral character in the Nicomachean Ethics. The phrasing is Durant's; it does not appear in any of Aristotle's surviving works.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Despite being widely circulated as Aristotle, this exact phrasing has not been traced to any of his works. The earliest verifiable English-language appearances are from the 20th century and the original author has not been identified. The sentiment is broadly compatible with Aristotelian thought but the formulation is modern.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
The injunction to 'know thyself' was a maxim inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, attributed in antiquity to figures such as Thales, Solon, and Chilon long before Aristotle. The English phrasing 'knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom' is a modern restatement and is not from Aristotle.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but the actual source is Will Durant. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Source: Will Durant , The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (1926), reprinted in Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6 ], Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VI: Psychology and the Nature of Art: "Artistic creation, says Aristotl
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but the actual source is Elbert Hubbard. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Source: Elbert Hubbard , Little Journeys to the Homes of American Statesmen (1898), p. 370 : "If you would escape moral and physical assassination, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing—court obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety lie." Other versions of the saying were repeated in several of Hub
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Those who can, do, those who cannot, teach.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This and many similar quotes with the same general meaning are misattributed to Aristotle as a result of Twitter attribution decay. The original source of the quote remains anonymous. The oldest reference resides in the works of George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903): "Maxims for Revolutionist
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Humour is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery is suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination is certainly false wit.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury , Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709), Part 1, Sec. 5, incorrectly attributing it to Gorgias via Aristotle.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Wisdom begins in wonder.”
The exact phrase 'wisdom begins in wonder' does not appear in any surviving Greek text. The closest source is Plato's Theaetetus 155d, where Socrates says 'wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder' — a related but distinct claim. Aristotle's Metaphysics 982b makes a similar point. The modern English compression is not a direct translation of either.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”
This line does not appear in any of Aristotle's surviving works, despite its frequent attribution to him on social media and in motivational literature. The Quote Investigator has documented its appearance in print no earlier than the 1990s, with no traceable connection to ancient sources. The diction and metaphor are both modern English.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Aristotle does discuss the unity of substantial form in Metaphysics VIII.6, where he writes that 'the totality is something besides the parts' — but this is not the same claim. The modern slogan 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' originates in early twentieth-century Gestalt psychology, particularly the work of Kurt Koffka, who actually argued the slightly different point that 'the whole is something else than the sum of its parts.'
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
Despite frequent attribution to Aristotle, this line does not appear in the Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, or any other surviving Aristotelian text. It is broadly compatible with Aristotle's discussion of pleasure as the completion of virtuous activity in NE Book X, but the formulation is modern English. The attribution likely arose from loose paraphrase rather than translation.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution.”
The first sentence echoes a sentiment Aristotle expresses, but the rest of the passage — 'high intention, sincere effort, intelligent execution' — is twentieth-century corporate motivational language and is not from any Aristotelian text. The full version most often appears in business and self-help contexts. Aristotle's actual discussion of excellence in the Nicomachean Ethics treats it as habituated disposition rather than as the result of episodic effort.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.”
The line — 'nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit' — appears in Seneca's De Tranquillitate Animi 17.10, where Seneca attributes the sentiment to Aristotle. No surviving Aristotelian text contains it. Seneca's report may be drawing on the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata XXX, which discusses the connection between melancholy and intellectual achievement, or may simply be a misattribution of Aristotle's contemporary.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
The line appears in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers V.20, where it is attributed to Aristotle as one of his sayings. No exact equivalent appears in Aristotle's surviving works. The Nicomachean Ethics treats friendship at length and contains related ideas (a friend is 'another self' in NE IX.4) but not the specific formulation that has become widely circulated.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
The line appears in Rousseau's Émile (1762): 'La patience est amère, mais son fruit est doux.' It is regularly misattributed to Aristotle, perhaps because the broader sentiment about virtue and difficulty is broadly Aristotelian. The Aristotelian corpus contains nothing like this exact formulation.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths; // In feelings, not in figures on a dial. // We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives // Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.”
This is actually from the poem "We live in deeds..." by Philip James Bailey . This explains the strange pattern of capitalization.
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”
Widely attributed since the mid to late 19th century, this apparently derives from a gloss or commentary on the following passage from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book 1, Ch. XI (Bekker No. 1100b.13–14): ὅμως δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτοις διαλάμπει τὸ καλόν, ἐπειδὰν φέρῃ τις εὐκόλως πολλὰς καὶ μεγάλας ἀτυχίας, μὴ δι᾽ ἀναλγησίαν, ἀλλὰ γεννάδας ὢν καὶ μεγαλόψυχος. εἰ δ᾽ εἰσὶν αἱ ἐνέργειαι κύριαι τῆς ζωῆς, καθάπερ εἴπομεν, οὐδεὶς ἂν γένοιτο τῶν μακαρίων ἄθλιος But nevertheless, even in these [misfortunes], nobility of the soul is conspicuous, when a man bears and digests many and great misfortunes, not from insensibility, but because he is high spirited and magnanimous. But if the energies…
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Widely attributed since the mid to late 19th century, this apparently derives from a gloss or commentary on the following passage from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book 1, Ch. XI (Bekker No. 1100b.13–14):”
ὅμως δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτοις διαλάμπει τὸ καλόν, ἐπειδὰν φέρῃ τις εὐκόλως πολλὰς καὶ μεγάλας ἀτυχίας, μὴ δι᾽ ἀναλγησίαν, ἀλλὰ γεννάδας ὢν καὶ μεγαλόψυχος. εἰ δ᾽ εἰσὶν αἱ ἐνέργειαι κύριαι τῆς ζωῆς, καθάπερ εἴπομεν, οὐδεὶς ἂν γένοιτο τῶν μακαρίων ἄθλιος But nevertheless, even in these [misfortunes], nobility of the soul is conspicuous, when a man bears and digests many and great misfortunes, not from insensibility, but because he is high spirited and magnanimous. But if the energies are the things that constitute the bliss or the misery of life, as we said, no happy man can ever become miserable. A New Translation of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (1835), 3rd. ed., Oxford: J. Vincent. p. 30…
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“ὅμως δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτοις διαλάμπει τὸ καλόν, ἐπειδὰν φέρῃ τις εὐκόλως πολλὰς καὶ μεγάλας ἀτυχίας, μὴ δι᾽ ἀναλγησίαν, ἀλλὰ γεννάδας ὢν καὶ μεγαλόψυχος. εἰ δ᾽ εἰσὶν αἱ ἐνέργειαι κύριαι τῆς ζωῆς, καθάπερ εἴπομεν, οὐδεὶς ἂν γένοιτο τῶν μακαρίων ἄθλιος”
But nevertheless, even in these [misfortunes], nobility of the soul is conspicuous, when a man bears and digests many and great misfortunes, not from insensibility, but because he is high spirited and magnanimous. But if the energies are the things that constitute the bliss or the misery of life, as we said, no happy man can ever become miserable. A New Translation of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (1835), 3rd. ed., Oxford: J. Vincent. p. 30 Nevertheless even under these [misfortunes] the force of nobility shines out, when a man bears calmly many great disasters, not from insensibility, but because he is generous and of a great soul. Setting happiness then, as we do, not in the outward…
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas .”
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth. Variant: Plato is my friend, but the truth is more my friend. A similar statement was attributed to Aristotle in antiquityː "Φίλος μὲν Σωκράτης, ἀλλὰ φιλτέρα ἀλήθεια." [" Socrates is a friend, but truth is a greater."] — Ammonius Hermiae , Life of Aristotle (as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 527). The variant mentioned above may possibly be derived from a reduction of a statement known to have been made by Isaac Newton , who at the head of notes he titled Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae ( Certain Philosophical Questions ) wrote in Latin: "Amicus Plato— amicus Aristoteles— magis amica veritas"… (Disputed.)
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Except are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.”
"The Letter of Aristotle to Alexander on the Policy toward the Cities", translated from Lettre d'Aristote à Alexandre sur la politique envers les cités , an Arabic text translated and edited by Józef Bielawski and Marian Plezia (1970), p. 72; translated from an ancient Greek text that survived only in Arabic translation, there is little acceptance that this is an authentic letter of Aristotle. (Disputed.)
-
Did Aristotle say this? No.
“Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for goals.”
Attributed to Aristotle in Bernhoff A. Dahl, Optimize Your Life! , Trionics International Inc., 2005, p. 111. (Disputed.)