The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Aristotle (384–322 BC) was Plato's student and Alexander the Great's tutor, and founded the Lyceum in Athens. His work spans logic, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetics — effectively the whole of the knowledge available to him. The Nicomachean Ethics, where he develops virtue as a mean between extremes, is still read as a living text.
About this theme: Philosophy
Philosophy always sits awkwardly in a collection of quotations: systems do not compress into a sentence, and that is exactly what is asked of them. Kant's ethics or Nietzsche's critique of morality do not fit into a single line without loss. What survives is the phrasing — often brilliant, but lifted out of the context that gave it weight.
More by Aristotle
More on Philosophy
- The unexamined life is not worth living.— Socrates
- Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.— Baruch Spinoza
- The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.— Michel de Montaigne
- A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.— Blaise Pascal