Did Aristotle Really Say This?

Date: November 16, 2010Author: Brian LePort

I have seen the following quote from Aristotle posted on several locations across the web:

He who hath many friends hath none.

Sadly, I can’t find an actual source for the quote so I don’t know if it is authentically Aristotelian. If anyone can show me where to look I’d be grateful.

4 thoughts on “Did Aristotle Really Say This?”

Nick Norelli says:

November 16, 2010 at 6:22 am

This is as close as I could find:

But as regards good friends, should we have as many as possible, or is there a limit to the number of one’s friends, as there is to the size of a city? You cannot make a city of ten men, and if there are a hundred thousand it is a city no longer. But the proper number is presumably not a single number, but anything that falls between certain fixed points. So for friends too there is a fixed number perhaps the largest number with whom one can live together (for that, we found, thought to be very characteristic of friendship); and that one cannot live with many people and divide oneself up among them is plain. Further, they too must be friends of one another, if they are all to spend their days together; and it is a hard business for this condition to be fulfilled with a large number. It is found difficult, too, to rejoice and to grieve in an intimate way with many people, for it may likely happen that one has at once to be happy with one friend and to mourn with another. Presumably, then, it is well not to seek to have as many friends as possible, but as many as are enough for the purpose of living together; for it would seem actually impossible to be a great friend to many people. This is why one cannot love several people; love is ideally a sort of excess of friendship, and that can only be felt towards one person; therefore great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people. This seems to be confirmed in practice; for we do not find many people who are friends in the comradely way of friendship, and the famous friendships of this sort are always between two people. Those who have many friends and mix intimately with them all are thought to be no one’s friend, except in the way proper to fellow-citizens, and such people are also called obsequious. In the way proper to fellow-citizens, indeed, it is possible to be the friend of many and yet not be obsequious but a genuinely good man; but one cannot have with many people the friendship based on virtue and on the character of our friends themselves, and we must be content if we find even a few such. (N. E. IX.10, bold mine)
Brian LePort says:

November 16, 2010 at 8:39 am

Awesome! That looks like the root of the quote. You have done what Google could not do (at least for me).
Nick Norelli says:

November 16, 2010 at 9:18 am

It might merit checking the Greek and seeing if another translation is possible. I haven’t done that (yet).
Brian LePort says:

November 16, 2010 at 9:24 am

Good idea.

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