"The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake."
Read quote
6 likes
Quote collection
Aristotle quotes (page 45 of 64)
1.3K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The citizens begin by giving up some part of the constitution, and so with greater ease the government change something else which is a little more important, until they have undermined the whole fabric of the state."
Read quote
6 likes
"The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own."
Read quote
6 likes
"Whereas happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it, the various qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are various kinds of states and many forms of government; for different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government."
Read quote
6 likes
"To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good."
Read quote
6 likes
"Phronimos, possessing practical wisdom . But the only virtue special to a ruler is practical wisdom; all the others must be possessed, so it seems, both by rulers and ruled. The virtue of a person being ruled is not practical wisdom but correct opinion; he is rather like a person who makes the pipes, while the ruler is the one who can play them."
Read quote
6 likes
"A government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government."
Read quote
6 likes
"It seems that ambition makes most people wish to be loved rather than to love others."
Read quote
6 likes
"The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later."
Read quote
6 likes
"For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible."
Read quote
6 likes
"Xenophanes states that the fire in Lipara once failed for sixteen years, but returned in the seventeenth year. They say that the lava-stream in Etna is neither flaming nor continuous, but returns only after an interval of many years."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes
"To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character."
Read quote
6 likes
"Time past, even God is deprived of the power of recalling."
Read quote
6 likes
"Since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private - not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole."
Read quote
6 likes
"It has been handed down in mythical form from earliest times to posterity, that there are gods, and that the divine (Deity) compasses all nature. All beside this has been added, after the mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the multitude, and for the interests of the laws, and the advantage of the state."
Read quote
6 likes
"Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech."
Read quote
6 likes
"A good style must, first of all, be clear. It must not be mean or above the dignity of the subject. It must be appropriate."
Read quote
6 likes
"Take the case of just actions; just punishments and chastisements do indeed spring from a good principle, but they are good only because we cannot do without them - it would be better that neither individuals nor states should need anything of the sort - but actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life."
Read quote
6 likes
"Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean."
Read quote
6 likes