The greatest threat to the state is not faction but distraction

We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

The shape of the heaven is of necessity spherical; for that is the shape most appropriate to its substance and also by nature primary.

Men agree that justice in the abstract is proportion, but they differ in that some think that if they are equal in any respect they are equal absolutely, others that if they are unequal in any respect they should be unequal in all. The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own.

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

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.