# Aristotle quotes: what he really said and what he didn't

From 'Man is by nature a political animal' and 'One swallow does not make a summer' to the famous line about excellence being a habit, which is really Will Durant's: Aristotle's best-known sayings, with the work they come from.

- 191 votes · 11 items
- Jun 17, 2020 · gardener_winnipeg
- https://even.best/en/l/4646/aristotle-quotes-what-he-really-said-and-what-he-didn-t

## Top 11

1. **All men by nature desire to know.** (24 · ▲26 ▼2) — Metaphysics, opening line.
2. **Nature does nothing in vain.** (22 · ▲22 ▼0) — Politics, book I, and his works on animals.
3. **One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day.** (21 · ▲21 ▼0) — Nicomachean Ethics, book I.
4. **Man is by nature a political animal.** (18 · ▲20 ▼2) — Politics, book I.
5. **Hope is a waking dream.** (13 · ▲16 ▼3) — Reported by Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Philosophers, book V.
6. **Piety requires us to honour truth above our friends.** (12 · ▲13 ▼1) — Nicomachean Ethics, book I, on disagreeing with Plato; the source of 'Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas'.
7. **We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.** (11 · ▲14 ▼3) — Misattributed: Will Durant's 1926 summary of Aristotle in The Story of Philosophy.
8. **A friend is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.** (10 · ▲13 ▼3) — Reported by Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Philosophers, book V.
9. **We make war that we may live in peace.** (8 · ▲11 ▼3) — Nicomachean Ethics, book X.
10. **It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.** (8 · ▲9 ▼1) — Misattributed: a loose 20th-century paraphrase of the Nicomachean Ethics, not his words.
11. **Virtue is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency.** (8 · ▲8 ▼0) — Nicomachean Ethics, book II.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.