Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.

Life is only meaningful when we are striving for a goal .

The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.

Most persons think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they have no idea of what is a large and what a small state.... To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.

The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.