Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
True law operates on logic rather than personal feelings or impulses.
In plain terms
Law should be based on logic, not emotions.
What can you take from it?
Strive for objectivity in rule-making.

Where it applies

  • judicial decisions
  • policy making
  • conflict resolution

Putting it to work

  • remove emotion from verdicts
  • check for bias
  • focus on facts

Questions to consider

  • Can justice ever be truly free of human desire?
  • How do you balance empathy with rules?

Another view

Ignoring all human context can make laws feel cold or unjust.

More from Aristotle

  1. A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange.... Political society exists …

    Permalink to quote #24
  2. 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…

    Permalink to quote #26
  3. The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.

    Permalink to quote #23

Related quotes

  1. It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

    Edmund BurkeEdmund Burke quote #74
  2. Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder - just as animals are…

    Andrew SullivanAndrew Sullivan quote #1
  3. Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason.

    John PowellJohn Powell quote #1