Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.

If the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary.

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences-makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely.' Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions.

In inventing a model we may assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities.

...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.

Any change of government which has to be introduced should be one which men, starting from their existing constitutions, will be both willing and able to adopt, since there is quite as much trouble in the reformation of an old constitution as in the establishment of a new one, just as to unlearn is as hard as to learn.

He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.