Aristotle
Greek philosopher and polymath, student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great, founder of the Lyceum (335 BCE), and author of one of the most encyclopedic surviving bodies of work in the history of human thought — covering logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, biology, physics, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, and meteorology. Born 384 BCE in Stagira on the Chalcidic peninsula, he entered Plato's Academy in Athens at seventeen and remained for twenty years before moving on to tutor Alexander, then returning to Athens to found his own school. His ethical masterwork Nicomachean Ethics established eudaimonia ('flourishing,' often translated as 'happiness') as the highest human good — to be pursued through the cultivation of virtue understood as a 'mean' between extremes, lived in a polity, and culminating in the contemplative life. He died in 322 BCE on Euboea after fleeing Athens during the anti-Macedonian backlash that followed Alexander's death.
quotes in library
Quotes by Aristotle
105 quotes“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
“It is the activity of the soul in accord with virtue.”
“For one swallow does not make a summer.”
“And if there are several virtues, in accord with the best and most complete.”
“Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
“We are what we repeatedly do.”
“Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
“Virtue is a mean between two extremes.”
“Courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness.”
“Generosity is the mean between meanness and prodigality.”
“Each virtue follows this same pattern.”
“The mean is not the average. The mean is the right amount, in the right circumstance, for the right end.”
“This is the difficulty of the moral life.”
“It is easy to give. It is hard to give to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right reason.”
“That is virtue.”
“Virtue requires both knowledge and practice.”
“Knowing what is right is not enough. You must also do it.”
“And not just once. Repeatedly. Until it becomes a habit.”
“In a complete life.”
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