Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

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.

Greatness of Soul seems therefore to be as it were a crowning ornament of the virtues; it enhances their greatness, and it cannot exist without them. Hence it is hard to be truly great-souled, for greatness of soul is impossible without moral nobility.

We deliberate not about ends, but about means.

The best way to avoid envy is to deserve the success you get.

There is an error common to both oligarchies and to democracies: in the latter the demagogues, when the multitude are above the law, are always cutting the city in two by quarrels with the rich, whereas they should always profess to be maintaining their cause; just as in oligarchies the oligarchs should profess to maintain the cause of the people, . .

Doubt is the beginning of wisdom