That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair of state is not to be denied, but what should be the character of this public education, and how young persons should be educated, are questions which remain to be considered. As things are, there is disagreement about the subjects. For mankind are by no means agreed about the things to be taught, whether we look to virtue or the best life. Neither is it clear whether education is more concerned with intellectual or with moral virtue.

I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy.

The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.

The misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god.

So it is clear that the search for what is just is a search for the mean; for the law is the mean.

If what was said in the Ethics is true, that the happy life is the life according to virtue lived without impediment, and that virtue is a mean, then the life which is in a mean, and in a mean attainable by every one, must be the best. And the same principles of virtue and vice are characteristic of cities and of constitutions; for the constitution is in a figure the life of the city.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.