Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, whereafter Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. At eighteen, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPhilosopher
The greatest injustices proceed from those who pursue excess, not by those who are driven by necessity.
Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency . . .
Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.
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.
When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.
We are better able to study our neighbors than ourselves, and their actions than our own.
All that we do is done with an eye to something else.
When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.
That rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects.
As often as we do good, we offer sacrifices to God.
The democrats think that as they are equal they ought to be equal in all things.
Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers.
A very populous city can rarely, if ever, be well governed.
Quite often good things have hurtful consequences. There are instances of men who have been ruined by their money or killed by their courage.