Quotes from Aristotle

Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?

Man's work as Man is accomplished by virtue of Practical Wisdom and Moral Virtue, the latter giving the right aim and direction, the former the right means to its attainment;

Happiness seems to depend on leisure, because we work to have leisure, and wage war to live in peace.

The devotee of myth is in a way a philosopher, for myth is made up of things that cause wonder.

It is a part of probability that many improbabilities will happen.

One who asks the law to rule, therefore, is held to be asking god and intellect alone to rule, while one who asks man adds the beast. Desire is a thing of this sort; and spiritedness perverts rulers and the best men. Hence law is intellect without appetite.

When then the law has spoken in general terms, and there arises a case of exception to the general rule, it is proper, in so far as the lawgiver omits the case and by reason of his universality of statement is wrong, to set right the omission by ruling it as the lawgiver himself would rule were he there present, and would have provided by law had he foreseen the case would arise.

It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.

By the mean of the thing I denote a point equally distant from either extreme, which is one and the same for everybody; by the mean relative to us, that amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this is not one and the same for everybody.

Hence while in respect of its substance and the definition that states what it really is in essence virtue is the observance of the mean, in point of excellence and rightness it is an extreme.

There is no such thing as observing a mean in excess or deficiency, nor as exceeding or falling short in observance of a mean.

If there are two definitive features of ancient Greek civilization, they are loquacity and competition.