And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.

Quite often good things have hurtful consequences. There are instances of men who have been ruined by their money or killed by their courage.

Money originated with royalty and slavery, it has nothing to do with democracy or the struggle of the empoverished enslaved majority.

Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved.

Marriage is like retiring as a bachelor and getting a sexual pension. You don't have to work for the sex any more, but you only get 65% as much.

That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill.

Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency . . .