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
Anyone, without any great penetration, may distinguish the dispositions consequent on wealth; for its possessors are insolent and overbearing, from being tainted in a certain way by the getting of their wealth. For they are affected as though they possessed every good; since wealth is a sort of standard of the worth of other things; whence every thing seems to be purchasable by it.
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
Wealth comes from knowing what others do not know.
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.