The sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.

You can never learn anything that you did not already know

Every community is an association of some kind and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.

Revolutions are effected in two ways, by force and by fraud.

When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.

To be angry is easy. But to be angry with the right man at the right time and in the right manner, that is not easy.

The difference between a learned man and an ignorant one is the same as that between a living man and a corpse.