Aristotle Quotes About Thought Provoking

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter I, W. D. Ross translation (1908), validated Wikisource scan leaf 21. 'All men by nature desire to know' opens the work before the discussion of sensation, memory, experience, art and knowledge. This remains ancient philosophy mediated by translation, not a modern empirical finding about cognition.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book I; the opening argument begins from the idea that action aims at a perceived good.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Chapter VI; the public-domain English translation defines virtue through deliberate choice and the relative mean.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book IX, Chapter VIII, Project Gutenberg #8438. The surrounding argument explicitly contrasts this noble “Self-loving” with the blameworthy form that grasps at wealth, honours and bodily pleasures, so the line is not a defense of simple selfishness.

Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book III, Chapter XVI, William Ellis translation; represented through the 1912 Dent witness / Project Gutenberg #6762. In comparing rule by a person with rule by law, Aristotle says that passion can affect even the best rulers and concludes that law is reason without desire.

Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book I, Chapter II, William Ellis translation; represented through the Dent edition first issued in 1912 and Project Gutenberg #6762. Aristotle argues that the city is a natural association and says that man is naturally a political animal; this remains ancient political philosophy in translation, not a modern empirical classification.