In the many forms of government which have sprung up there has always been an acknowledgement of justice and proportionate equality, although mankind fail in attaining them, as indeed I have already explained. Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
AristotleIt is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia.
AristotleThe self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.
AristotleWhen you have thrown a stone, you cannot afterwards bring it back again, but nevertheless you are responsible for having taken up the stone and flung it, for the origin of the act was within you. Similarly the unjust and profligate might at the outset have avoided becoming so, and therefore they are so voluntarily, although when they have become unjust and profligate it is no longer open to them not to be so.
Aristotle