Aristotle Quotes
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Although it may be difficult in theory to know what is just and equal, the practical difficulty of inducing those to forbear who can, if they like, encroach, is far greater, for the weaker are always asking for equality and justice, but the stronger care for none of these things.
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The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.
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A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
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Equity is that idea of justice which contravenes the written law.
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He is courageous who endures and fears the right thing, for the right motive, in the right way and at the right times.
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The same things are best both for individuals and for states, and these are the things which the legislator ought to implant in the minds of his citizens.
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...in this way the structure of the universe- I mean, of the heavens and the earth and the whole world- was arranged by one harmony through the blending of the most opposite principles.
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For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.
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They who have drunk beer, fall on their back, but there is a peculiarity in the effects of the drink made from barley, for they that get drunk on other intoxicating liquors fall on all parts of their body, they fall on the left side, on the right side, on their faces, and and on their backs. But it is only those who get drunk on beer that fall on their backs with their faces upward.
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It may be argued that peoples for whom philosophers legislate are always prosperous.
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No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
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Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of control...They are changeable and fickle in their desires which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep rooted.
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Nor need it cause surprise that things disagreeable to the good man should seem pleasant to some men; for mankind is liable to many corruptions and diseases, and the things in question are not really pleasant, but only pleasant to these particular persons, who are in a condition to think them so.
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The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.
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It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong.
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The greatest threat to the state is not faction but distraction.
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A right election can only be made by those who have knowledge.
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Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.
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In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
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Earthworms are the intenstines of the soil.
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The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.
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For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.
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Marriage is like retiring as a bachelor and getting a sexual pension. You don't have to work for the sex any more, but you only get 65% as much.
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So we must lay it down that the association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions. Those who contribute most to this kind of association are for that very reason entitled to a larger share in the state than those who, though they may be equal or even superior in free birth and in family, are inferior in the virtue that belongs to a citizen. Similarly they are entitled to a larger share than those who are superior in riches but inferior in virtue.