The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.

The greatest threat to the state is not faction but distraction

The student of politics therefore as well as the psychologist must study the nature of the soul.

There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.

Governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

All flatterers are mercenary, and all low-minded men are flatterers.