My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing.

A state is an association of similar persons whose aim is the best life possible. What is best is happiness, and to be happy is an active exercise of virtue and a complete employment of it.

Every community is an association of some kind and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.

But nothing is yet clear on the subject of the intellect and the contemplative faculty. However, it seems to be another kind of soul, and this alone admits of being separated, as that which is eternal from that which is perishable, while it is clear from these remarks that the other parts of the soul are not separable, as some assert them to be, though it is obvious that they are conceptually distinct.

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.