One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect at the same time.

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

Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.

And this lies in the nature of things: What people are potentially is revealed in actuality by what they produce.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well-off, being in the majority, are in sovereign control of government, an oligarchy when control lies with the rich and better-born, these being few.

In a polity, each citizen is to possess his own arms, which are not supplied or owned by the state.