Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Aristotle suggests that every action we take can be attributed to one of seven fundamental causes.
In this quote, Aristotle outlines a framework for understanding human behavior by identifying seven potential causes of actions. He implies that our choices and behaviors are not arbitrary but can be traced back to specific factors such as chance occurrences, innate qualities of nature, external pressures (compulsion), established patterns (habit), intellectual deliberation (reasoning), emotional responses (anger), and basic desires (appetite). This insight invites us to reflect on how these causes influence our daily actions and decisions.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about human behavior, you might use this quote to illustrate the factors that influence decisions.
More from Aristotle
All quotes →Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.
For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
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If nations perish, it is not because of their devotion to liberty, but for their disregard of its requirements.
I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things—the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos—are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul.
Truthiness is what you want the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support.
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.