Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.

One kind of justice is that which is manifested in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution ... and another kind is that which plays a rectifying part in transactions.

If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out.

We are the sum of our actions, and therefore our habits make all the difference.

The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate.

When the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence.

All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.