 We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. |
| Man is naturally a political animal. |
| A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one. |
| Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so. |
| He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god. |
| If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost. Topics: Government |
| Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. |
| The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes. |
| Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities. |
| Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. |
| 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. |
| Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms. |
| Friendship is essentially a partnership. |
| No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world. |
| No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness. |
| 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. |
| Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach. |
| Bad men are full of repentance. |
| 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. |
| Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. |
