When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.

Of mankind in general, the parts are greater than the whole.

We work to earn our leisure.

Happiness is essentially perfect; so that the happy man requires in addition the goods of the body, external goods and the gifts of fortune, in order that his activity may not be impeded through lack of them.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

As the pleasures of the body are the ones which we most often meet with, and as all men are capable of these, these have usurped the family title; and some men think these are the only pleasures that exist, because they are the only ones which they know.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.