69 Aristotle Quotes 1. “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” – Aristotle 2. “Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.” – Aristotle 3. “Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.” – Aristotle 4. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” – Aristotle 5. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” – Aristotle 6. “There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” – Aristotle 7. “My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.” – Aristotle 8. “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” – Aristotle 9. “The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.” – Aristotle 10. “Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.” – Aristotle 11. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle 12. “Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.” – Aristotle 13. “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.” – Aristotle 14. “A friend to all is a friend to none.” – Aristotle 15. “Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.” – Aristotle 16. “Change in all things is sweet.” – Aristotle 17. “The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.” – Aristotle 18. “What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.” – Aristotle 19. “I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.” – Aristotle 20. “Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.” – Aristotle 21. “He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.” – Aristotle 22. “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” – Aristotle 23. “I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.” – Aristotle 24. “Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.” – Aristotle 25. “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” – Aristotle 26. “Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.” – Aristotle 27. “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” – Aristotle 28. “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle 29. “Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” – Aristotle 30. “Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.” – Aristotle 31. “You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.” – Aristotle 32. “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.” – Aristotle 33. “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” – Aristotle 34. “Well begun is half done.” – Aristotle 35. “Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” – Aristotle 36. “Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.” – Aristotle 37. “All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.” – Aristotle 38. “Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.” – Aristotle 39. “No one loves the man whom he fears.” – Aristotle 40. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle 41. “First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.” – Aristotle 42. “It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.” – Aristotle 43. “Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.” – Aristotle 44. “One thing alone not even God can do, To make undone whatever hath been done.” – Aristotle 45. “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” – Aristotle 46. “Nature does nothing uselessly.” – Aristotle 47. “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” – Aristotle 48. “The soul never thinks without a picture. Hope is the dream of a waking man.” – Aristotle 49. “We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.” – Aristotle 50. “Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.” – Aristotle 51. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life: the whole aim and end of human existence.” – Aristotle 52. “Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions.” – Aristotle 53. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle 54. “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” – Aristotle 55. “The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.” – Aristotle 56. “It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.” – Aristotle 57. “He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” – Aristotle 58. “No happy man can become miserable, for he will never do acts that are hateful and mean.” – Aristotle 59. “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” – Aristotle 60. “It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.” – Aristotle 61. “The proof that you know something is that you are able to teach it.” – Aristotle 62. “Through discipline comes freedom.” – Aristotle 63. “To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.” – Aristotle 64. “We cannot learn without pain.” – Aristotle 65. “Happiness is a state of activity.” – Aristotle 66. “All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.” – Aristotle 67. “Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.” – Aristotle 68. “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” – Aristotle 69. “All men by nature desire to know.” – Aristotle Also: https://www.startuppacks.com/quotes/aristotle-quotes/
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. Plato
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...est-tony-benn-quotes-as-picked-by-our-readers Tony Benn: 1) “If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.” Tony Benn was interviewed in Sicko, Michael Moore’s documentary film about the health industry in the US. Explaining the post-war creation of the welfare state, he said the popular mood of the 1945 election was: “If you can have full employment by killing Germans, why can’t we have full employment by building hospitals, building schools?” 2) His “Five questions” for the powerful. Tony Benn’s final speech to the House of Commons as MP was an appropriately eloquent farewell, in which he talked widely on his view of the role of parliament and the wider question of democracy. As Hansard records, he said: In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system. 3) “Making mistakes is how you learn.” Interviewed recently for Radio 4’s Today program, Tony Benn was asked to look back on his career. He replied: I made every mistake in the book, but making mistakes is how you learn. I would be ashamed if I ever said anything I didn’t believe in, to get on personally. 4) “I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so” when he announced he would not be standing for re-election at the next general election 5) “The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.” Given the above, this quote is not especially surprising, but worth repeating. Tony Benn was a lifelong campaigner for constitutional reform, and introduced a bill that would have allowed him to renounce his peerage as early as 1955. 6) “I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.” Another quote from Tony Benn’s interview with Michael Moore in Sicko, in which he highlighted poverty and healthcare inequality as a democratic issue. “The people in debt become hopeless, and the hopeless people don’t vote... an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern,” he said. 7) “Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself” Tony Benn thought any meaningful change could only come from below, and felt apathy was openly encouraged by those in positions of power. “The Prime Minister said in 1911, 14 years before I was born, that if women get the vote it will undermine parliamentary democracy. How did apartheid end? How did anything happen?” 8) “We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.” Blamed by many for contributing to Labour’s lack of electoral success during the 1980s, Tony Benn was a totem for those who rejected the shift to the right widely seen as necessary if the party was to regain power. This shift was eventually completed under Tony Blair, who pushed through the abandonment of clause IV and redefined Labour as a party comfortable with privatisation and free market economics. The quote above indicates why Benn resisted such a move. 9) “There is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.” After his retirement from parliament, Benn became the public face of the Stop the War coalition. In a particularly spiky edition of BBC Question Time, his exchanges with US Republican John Bolton included this broadside: I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now and I was here in London during the Blitz. And every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: ‘We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.’ That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it’s a war crime that’s been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons. 10) “A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.” Tony Benn... a voice of reason to many after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.