Q0009

Aristotle

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
Thinker Aristotle
School Peripatetic School
Source Metaphysics I.2, 982b12–13
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Metaphysics I.2, 982b12–13, within the tradition of Peripatetic School. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Aristotle's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Aristotle. (n.d.). It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0009

MLA: Aristotle. “It is through wonder that people both now….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0009.

Chicago: Aristotle. “It is through wonder that people both now….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0009.

Same thinker

More from Aristotle

  1. The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.
  2. Virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, and are brought to completion by habit.
  3. Virtue is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us.
  4. Man is by nature a political animal.
  5. A friend is another self.

All quotations by Aristotle

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. A person's character is their destiny.
  2. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  3. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  4. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.
  5. Of things, some are in our power, and some are not.

Browse the philosophy theme