Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
— Aristotle
Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
Friendship is essentially a partnership.
No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
Man is by nature a political animal.
What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
The law is reason, free from passion.
My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.
The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
The soul never thinks without a picture.
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
Education is the best provision for old age.
A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way.
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
Most people would rather give than get affection.
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
