Aristotle Quotes

I was looking for a quote yesterday that I thought was from Aristotle. The quote was "Music bypasses the gatekeeper of reason and enters the soul." I never did find out if it was one of his or not but some of the other quotes that I came across were great.

How 'bout this one - "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." Aristotle was a philosopher or in case people don't know what that means, a lover of wisdom. I think this is a wise quote and I wish that elites in todays society would recognize this kind of wisdom and realize that it is in their best interest to alleviate poverty and create opportunity for the poor.

There was one other quote that sent my mind off on a tangent as well. It was "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Although I don't have a college degree, I do consider myself an educated person. I went to college for 4 years and then stopped in order to go into business for myself. In January I will have been in business for 4 years and it has worked out to be exceptionally beneficial for me so far. During my years in business I have not stopped thinking or educating myself and one important realization I have come to is that education and wisdom are free or at least almost free if you count the minimal costs associated with buying used books or paying late fees at the library. I feel like self education can be more beneficial than a traditional education because an individual can navigate their mind wherever their interests take them. During the course of my own thoughts and readings I have entertained many thoughts that I do not accept, which is one reason why I not only liked this quote but was a little flattered by it. Not having a degree sometimes makes me feel a little inferior to other friends of mine who are educated but it is nice to think that a man as wise as Aristotle might have considered me educated.

I have, in my mind, thoughts that I don't know if I should accept or not. I spend much of my time thinking about how to rescue the poor from their suffering. I know it sounds cheesy but, as a Christian man, I believe that loving the poor is a way for me to love God. There have been times in my life when I've tried to feel a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart for God because I think church taught me that loving God was supposed to lead to that kind of feeling. To be honest, whether I'm right or wrong, I'm not sure if I've ever really felt that way but I'm not convinced that Love is something that you feel more than it is something that you do. I'm not very outwardly religious but loving the poor is something that I want to do and think about constantly even if it's only in my mind. The thoughts that I don't know whether or not I should accept deal with alleviating the suffering of the poor. It's almost as if I've come up with a plan that could fix the worlds problems but I'm hesitant to share it because even I'm not convinced that it's not crazy. Sometimes I feel like writing a book and laying it all out there but I feel like I would be crushed under the criticism that I know it would receive or maybe I'd feel even more crushed if everyone that read it thought it was stupid and it never even caught traction which is actually a much more likely scenario. Alleviating the suffering of the poor would be tremendously difficult without the consent of the rich and those people scare me even though it's hard to deny that I am one of them, at least during this time in my life.