The first essential responsibility of the state is control of the market-place: there must be some official charged with the duty of seeing that honest dealing and good order prevail. For one of the well-nigh essential activities of all states is the buying and selling of goods to meet their mutual basic needs; this is the quickest way to self-sufficiency, which seems to be what moves men to combine under a single constitution.

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.

We work to earn our leisure.

The best tragedies are conflicts between a hero and his destiny.

There are still two forms besides democracy and oligarchy; one of them is universally recognized and included among the four principal forms of government, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or government of the best. But there is also a fifth, which retains the generic name of polity or constitutional government.