Aristotle Quotes About Wisdom

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 II; Aristotle explains virtue as something developed through corresponding actions.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #8438. The sentence occurs in Aristotle’s opening inventory of why friendship is necessary across different stages of life.

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

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Chapter III, Project Gutenberg #8438. Aristotle has just argued that people must become mutually known and prove themselves fit objects of friendship before the relationship is complete.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII; Aristotle begins his discussion of friendship by treating it as necessary to a good life.

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.