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

Friendship is a thing most necessary to life, since without friends no one would choose to live, though possessed of all other advantages.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

The first essential responsibility of the state is control of the market-place: there must be some official charged with the duty of seeing that honest dealing and good order prevail. For one of the well-nigh essential activities of all states is the buying and selling of goods to meet their mutual basic needs; this is the quickest way to self-sufficiency, which seems to be what moves men to combine under a single constitution.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

A man who examines each subject from a philosophical standpoint cannot neglect them: he has to omit nothing, and state the truth about each topic.

If then, as we say, good craftsmen look to the mean as they work, and if virtue, like nature, is more accurate and better than any form of art, it will follow that virtue has the quality of hitting the mean. I refer to moral virtue [not intellectual], for this is concerned with emotions and actions, in which one can have excess or deficiency or a due mean.