Aristotle - People Quotes

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When quarrels and complaints arise, it is when people who are equal have not got equal shares, or vice-versa.

Aristotle
What is the highest of all goods achievable by action?...both the general run of man and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness...but with regard to what happiness is they differ.

Aristotle
All three states - the Lacedaemonian, the Cretan, and the Carthaginian - nearly resemble one another, and are very different from any others. Many of the Carthaginian institutions are excellent. The superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common people remains loyal to the constitution; the Carthaginians have never had any rebellion worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule of a tyrant.

Aristotle
It may be argued that peoples for whom philosophers legislate are always prosperous.

Aristotle
We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

Aristotle
Those who merely possess the goods of fortune may be haughty and insolent;... they try to imitate the great-souled man without being really like him, and only copy him in what they can, reproducing his contempt for others but not his virtuous conduct. For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people - his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride.

Aristotle
Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.

Aristotle
It seems that ambition makes most people wish to be loved rather than to love others.

Aristotle
But is it just then that the few and the wealthy should be the rulers? And what if they, in like manner, rob and plunder the people, - is this just?

Aristotle
In the case of some people, not even if we had the most accurate scientific knowledge, would it be easy to persuade them were we to address them through the medium of that knowledge; for a scientific discourse, it is the privilege of education to appreciate, and it is impossible that this should extend to the multitude.

Aristotle
In the first place, then, men should guard against the beginning of change, and in the second place they should not rely upon the political devices of which I have already spoken invented only to deceive the people, for they are proved by experience to be useless.

Aristotle
The true friend of the people should see that they be not too poor, for extreme poverty lowers the character of the democracy.

Aristotle
Whereas young people become accomplished in geometry and mathematics, and wise within these limits, prudent young people do not seem to be found. The reason is that prudence is concerned with particulars as well as universals, and particulars become known from experience, but a young person lacks experience, since some length of time is needed to produce it.

Aristotle
Between friends there is no need for justice, but people who are just still need the quality of friendship; and indeed friendliness is considered to be justice in the fullest sense.

Aristotle
Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

Aristotle
When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

Aristotle
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Aristotle
Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them...

Aristotle
It is not ill-bred to adopt a high manner with the great and the powerful, but it is vulgar to lord it over humble people.

Aristotle
People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life.

Aristotle
The unfortunate need people who will be kind to them; the prosperous need people to be kind to.

Aristotle
It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

Aristotle
We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.

Aristotle