Quotes & Sayings About Justice Aristotle

Laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any general principle embracing all particulars. — Aristotle.

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

There are three qualifications required in those who have to fill the highest offices, - (1) first of all, loyalty to the established constitution; (2) the greatest administrative capacity; (3) virtue and justice of the kind proper to each form of government. — Aristotle.

In justice is all virtues found in sum. — Aristotle.

Equity is that idea of justice which contravenes the written law. — Aristotle.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. - Aristotle — Greg Iles

Between friends there is no need of justice. — Aristotle.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice. — Aristotle.

Although it may be difficult in theory to know what is just and equal, the practical difficulty of inducing those to forbear who can, if they like, encroach, is far greater, for the weaker are always asking for equality and justice, but the stronger care for none of these things. — Aristotle.

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. — Aristotle.

Justice is Equality ... but equality of what? — Aristotle.

To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence. — Aristotle.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions. — Aristotle.

For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society. — Aristotle.

The goodness or badness, justice or injustice, of laws varies of necessity with the constitution of states. This, however, is clear, that the laws must be adapted to the constitutions. But if so, true forms of government will of necessity have just laws, and perverted forms of government will have unjust laws. — Aristotle.

One kind of justice is that which is manifested in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution ... and another kind is that which plays a rectifying part in transactions. — Aristotle.

They who are to be judges must also be performers. — Aristotle.

Justice is the loveliest and health is the best, but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire. — Aristotle.

No one praises happiness as one praises justice, but we call it a 'blessing,' deeming it something higher and more divine than things we praise. — Aristotle.

Thus it is thought that justice is equality; and so it is, but not for all persons, only for those that are equal. Inequality also is thought to be just; and so it is, but not for all, only for the unequal. We make bad mistakes if we neglect this for whom when we are deciding what is just. The reason is that we are making judgements about ourselves, and people are generally bad judges where their own interests are involved. — Aristotle.

The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either. — Aristotle.

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered. — Aristotle.

In seeking for justice men seek for the mean or neutral, for the law is the mean. Again, customary laws have more weight, and relate to more important matters, than written laws, and a man may be a safer ruler than the written law, but not safer than the customary law. — Aristotle.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert. — Aristotle.

Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn. — Aristotle.

It [Justice] is complete virtue in the fullest sense, because it is the active exercise of complete virtue; and it is complete because its possessor can exercise it in relation to another person, and not only by himself. — Aristotle.

Governments, which have a regard to the common interest, are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen. — Aristotle.

If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart,' Aristotle writes, their association can't really be considered a polis, or political community.
'A polis is not an association for residence on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange.' While these conditions are necessary to a polis, they are not sufficient. 'The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end. — Michael J. Sandel

Teaching is the highest form of understanding. — Aristotle.

It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong. — Aristotle.

For example, justice is considered to mean equality, It does mean equality- but equality for those who are equal, and not for all. — Aristotle.

That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a questionable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body. — Aristotle.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom. — Aristotle.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. — Aristotle.

The greatest injustices proceed from those who pursue excess, not by those who are driven by necessity. — Aristotle.

In money-lenders' capital the form M-C-M is reduced to the two extremes without a mean, M-M , money exchanged for more money, a form that is incompatible with the nature of money, and therefore remains inexplicable from the standpoint of the circulation of commodities. Hence Aristotle: since chrematistic is a double science, one part belonging to commerce, the other to economic, the latter being necessary and praiseworthy, the former based on circulation and with justice disapproved (for it is not based on Nature, but on mutual cheating), therefore the usurer is most rightly hated, because money itself is the source of his gain, and is not used for the purposes for which it was invented. — Karl Marx

The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want. — Aristotle.

Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are in their nature stronger than their opposites; so that if decisions be made, not in conformity to the rule of propriety, it must have been that they have been got the better of through fault of the advocates themselves: and this is deserving reprehension. — Aristotle.

Excavations at Ai Khanoum on the northern border of modern Afghanistan have produced great quantities of Greek inscriptions and even the remnants of a philosophical treatise originally on papyrus. One of the most interesting is the base of a dedication by one Klearchos, perhaps the known student of Aristotle, that records his bringing to this new Greek city, Alexandria on the Oxus, the traditional maxims from the shrine of Apollo at Delphi concerning the five ages of man:

In childhood, seemliness
In youth, self-control
In middle age, justice
In old age, wise council
In death, painlessness — Robin Lane Fox

The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why. — Michael Sandel

It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge. — Aristotle.