Aristotle
Aristote (384-322 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher, teacher, and scientist, one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western thought. He was the oracle of the scholastic philosophers and theologians in the Middle Ages. He is the author of a great number of writings which covered a vast field of speculation, including logic, ethics, metaphysics, politics, natural sciences, and physics, of which the progress of modern science goes to establish the value. He is often referred to as the incarnation of the philosophic spirit. He was a student of Plato and tutor to Alexander the Great.Aristotle was a native of Stagira, in Thrace, and hence named the Stagirite. While yet a youth, he was deprived of his parents. In his 17th year, he came to Athens and remained in Plato's society there for 20 years. After the death of Plato, his teacher, at the request of Philip, king of Macedon, who held him in high honour, he became the preceptor of Alexander the Great, the prince of Macedon, then only 13 years old. On Alexander's expedition into Asia, returned to Athens and began to teach in the Lyceum, a school which he had founded outside Athens, where it was his habit to walk up and down as he taught, from which circumstance his school got the name of Peripatetic. After 13 years he left the city and went to Chalcis, in Euboea, where he died.
His famous works are Rhetorics, Politics, Natural History and Poetics.
Wisdom & Quotes
- Beauty is the gift of god.
- Hope is a waking dream.
- We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
- All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
- One swallow does not make a spring.
- Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil - and if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty.
- The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication; for youth is sweet and they are growing.
- Law means good order.
- Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
- He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself , must be either a beast or a god.
- Man is by nature a political animal.
- That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.
- Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude, effecting through pity and fear the proper purgation (katharsis) of these emotions.
- The greatest thing in style is to have a command of metaphor.
- Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
- A good style must have an air of novelty, at the same time concealing its art.
- A good style must, first of all, be clear. It must ... be appropriate.
Epicurus