It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.
Aristotle

All men by nature desire knowledge.
Aristotle

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
Aristotle

Law is mind without reason.
Aristotle

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.
Aristotle

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.
Aristotle

The secret to humor is surprise.
Aristotle

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

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.
Aristotle

He who hath many friends hath none.
Aristotle

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
Aristotle

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
Aristotle

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
Aristotle

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
Aristotle

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.
Aristotle

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.
Aristotle

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Aristotle

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
Aristotle

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

Bad men are full of repentance.
Aristotle

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
Aristotle

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.
Aristotle

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
Aristotle

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.
Aristotle

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

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
Aristotle