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Aristotle quotes

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“he who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.” Aristotle, Politics
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
“Tyranny, as I was saying, is monarchy exercising the rule of a master over the political society; oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands; democracy, the opposite, when the indigent, and not the men of property, are...” Aristotle, Politics
“Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.” Aristotle, Poetics
“He who is a citizen in a democracy will often not be a citizen in an oligarchy.” Aristotle, Politics
“Hence in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens.” Aristotle, Politics
“Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons, and no government can stand which is not founded upon justice.” Aristotle, Politics
“Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.” Aristotle, Politics
“Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.” Aristotle, Poetics
“A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state, especially of the highest of all. The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.” Aristotle, Politics
“Now it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.” Aristotle, Politics
“Whereas the law is passionless, passion must ever sway the heart of man.” Aristotle, Politics
“Again, the many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.” Aristotle, Politics
“Every citizen, it is said, must have equality, and therefore in a democracy the poor have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.” Aristotle, Politics
“Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.” Aristotle, Politics
“Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.” Aristotle, Politics
“Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.” Aristotle, Politics
“if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end.” Aristotle, Politics
“For if liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.” Aristotle, Politics
“But we must remember that good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government.” Aristotle, Politics
“poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” Aristotle, Politics
“In revolutions the occasions may be trifling, but great interests are at stake.” Aristotle, Politics
“It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.” Aristotle, Politics
“Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.” Aristotle, Politics
“It is not easy to determine the nature of music, or why any one should have a knowledge of it.” Aristotle, Politics
“both art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder; for even the good is better when it is harder.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
“Now if nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man.” Aristotle, Politics
“As in other departments of science, so in politics, the compound should always be resolved into the simple elements or least parts of the whole.” Aristotle, Politics
“Hence it is evident that the good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.” Aristotle, Politics
“Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold; and hence great is the honor bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but on him who kills a tyrant.” Aristotle, Politics
“the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.” Aristotle, Poetics
“It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully.” Aristotle, Poetics
“to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Related topics

revolution tragedy government democracy equality poetry law citizenship good freedom power politics poverty tyranny nature state virtue respect authority comedy

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Politics (26)
Poetics (4)
Nicomachean Ethics (3)