Aristotle Quotes About Animals

• At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

  Aristotle

  Philosophy, Animal, Men

• If some animals are good at hunting and others are suitable for hunting, then the Gods must clearly smile on hunting.

  Aristotle

  Hunting, Animal, Hunters

• Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Life, Perseverance

  Attributed to Aristotle in "Optimize Your Life!" by Bernhoff A. Dahl, p. 111, 2005.

• To the size of the state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and implements, for none of these retain their facility when they are too large.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Government, Limits

• For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

  Aristotle

  Determination, Animal, Men

  Aristotle, Hugh Griffith (2009). “Aristotle”, p.201, Collector's Library

• Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Men, Self

• We should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful.

  Aristotle

  Beautiful, Animal, Venture

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Parts of Animals”, p.27, Aeterna Press

• Man is by nature a political animal.

  Aristotle

  Nature, Philosophical, Animal

  Politics bk. 1, 1253a

• The soul of animals is characterized by two faculties, (a) the faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and (b) the faculty of originating local movement.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Two, Soul

  Aristotle (2015). “The Complete Aristotle”, p.1108, Booklassic

• Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Men, Law

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

• For the real difference between humans and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust, etc. It is the sharing of a common view in these matters that makes a household and a state.

  Aristotle

  Real, Animal, Views

  Aristotle (1987). “A New Aristotle reader”

• All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful.

  Aristotle

  Children, Animal, Brave

  Aristotle, Harris Rackham (1962). “The Nicomachean ethics”

• Most persons think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they have no idea of what is a large and what a small state.... To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Thinking, Order

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.369, Simon and Schuster

• Nature does nothing without a purpose. In children may be observed the traces and seeds of what will one day be settled psychological habits, though psychologically a child hardly differs for the time being from an animal.

  Aristotle

  Nature, Children, Science

  Historia Animalium VIII.I (transl. D. W. Thompson)

• The aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought....The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Hatred, Aim Of Education

• Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Generations, Facts

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.1790, Delphi Classics

• The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived.

  Aristotle

  Science, Animal, Sheep

  Aristotle, Johann Gottlob Schneider (1862). “Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books”, p.31

• A human being is a naturally political [animal].

  Aristotle

  Animal, Political, Humans

  Aristotle, Terence Irwin (1996). “Aristotle: Introductory Readings”, p.290, Hackett Publishing

• Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice. If he finds himself an individual who cannot live in society, or who pretends he has need of only his own resources do not consider him as a member of humanity; he is a savage beast or a god.

  Aristotle

  Men, Animal, Law

• It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Men, Political

  Politics bk. 1, 1253a

• Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Political, Doe

  c.330 BC Politics, bk.1, ch.2,1253b (translated by T A Sinclair).

• Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.

  Aristotle

  Beauty, Beautiful, Confused

• Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Law, Cities

• If there is any kind of animal which is female and has no male separate from it, it is possible that this may generate a young one from itself. No instance of this worthy of any credit has been observed up to the present at any rate, but one case in the class of fishes makes us hesitate. No male of the so-called erythrinus has ever yet been seen, but females, and specimens full of roe, have been seen. Of this, however, we have as yet no proof worthy of credit.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Class, Males

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.1150, Princeton University Press

• Plants, again, inasmuch as they are without locomotion, present no great variety in their heterogeneous pacts. For, when the functions are but few, few also are the organs required to effect them. ... Animals, however, that not only live but perceive, present a great multiformity of pacts, and this diversity is greater in some animals than in others, being most varied in those to whose share has fallen not mere life but life of high degree. Now such an animal is man.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Men, Diversity

You May Also Like:

Plato

Socrates

Democritus

Galileo Galilei

Alexander the Great

Thomas Aquinas

Rene Descartes