Aristotle
384-322 BC | Stagira, Macedonia
The man who systematized reality itself. Aristotle studied under Plato for twenty years, then tutored Alexander the Great, then founded his own school, the Lyceum. Where Plato looked to the heavens, Aristotle looked at the earth - cataloging plants, animals, constitutions, and arguments. He invented logic, founded biology, and wrote the foundational texts of ethics, politics, physics, and metaphysics. For two thousand years, to be educated meant to study Aristotle. "The Philosopher," they simply called him.
Aristotle's Works
The foundations of Western knowledge"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Nicomachean Ethics (paraphrase)
"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
- Attributed to Aristotle
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
- Attributed to Aristotle
"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
- Metaphysics
"Happiness depends upon ourselves."
- Nicomachean Ethics