If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good.

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

Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

At first he who invented any art that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility.

The senses are gateways to the intelligence. There is nothing in the intelligence which did not first pass through the senses.

Evidence from torture may be considered completely untrustworthy