Aristotle People Quotations

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.

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

Most people would rather give than get affection.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Most people would rather get than give affection

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

People do not naturally become morally excellent or practically wise. They become so, if at all, only as the result of lifelong personal and community effort.

A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.

The principle aim of gymnastics is the education of all youth and not simply that minority of people highly favored by nature.

Philosophy can make people sick.

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing.

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

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

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

A speaker who is attempting to move people to thought or action must concern himself with Pathos.

Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation.

Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader.

Shipping magnate of the 20th century If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.

Obstinate people can be divided into the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish.

People become house builders through building houses, harp players through playing the harp. We grow to be just by doing things which are just.

Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it; People become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarily, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.

Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.

There are no experienced young people. Time makes experience.

Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved.

Hence intellect[ual perception] is both a beginning and an end, for the demonstrations arise from these, and concern them. As a result, one ought to pay attention to the undemonstrated assertions and opinions of experienced and older people, or of the prudent, no less than to demonstrations, for, because the have an experienced eye, they see correctly.

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

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

Even that some people try deceived me many times ... I will not fail to believe that somewhere, someone deserves my trust.

It is also in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor... the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.

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

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

Ancient laws remain in force long after the people have the power to change them.

Bad people...are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.

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.

It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.

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.

A true friend is one soul divided into two people.

Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it.

... the friendship of worthless people has a bad effect (because they take part, unstable as they are, in worthless pursuits, and actually become bad through each other's influence). But the friendship of the good is good, and increases in goodness because of their association. They seem even to become better men by exercising their friendship and improving each other; for the traits that they admire in each other get transferred to themselves.

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.

People generally despise where they flatter.

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.

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.

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?

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.

And this lies in the nature of things: What people are potentially is revealed in actuality by what they produce.

People never know each other until they have eaten a certain amount of salt together.

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.

All people by nature desire to know. An example of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves.

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

To write well, express yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.