Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader.

In the first place, then, men should guard against the beginning of change, and in the second place they should not rely upon the political devices of which I have already spoken invented only to deceive the people, for they are proved by experience to be useless.

How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms

Happiness depends on ourselves.

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.

The line has magnitude in one way, the plane in two ways, and the solid in three ways, and beyond these there is no other magnitude because the three are all.

Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.