Skip to content

The populousness of democracies generally preserves them (for number is to democracy in the place of justice based on merit); whereas the preservation of an oligarchy clearly depends on an opposite principle, viz. good order.

Another quote →

Topics

Democracy

More quotes by Aristotle

The wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.

That which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results.

But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.’

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

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

All Aristotle quotes →

You may also like

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Aristotle (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.