Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip.
Law is mind without reason.
Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.
Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
Happiness is the settling of the soul into its most appropriate spot.
The proof that you know something is that you are able to teach it.
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
Between husband and wife friendship seems to exist by nature, for man is naturally disposed to pairing.
We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
All friendly feelings toward others come from the friendly feelings a person has for himself.