Society and the World

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.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

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.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

The law is reason, free from passion.

The law is reason, free from passion.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Education is the best provision for old age.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

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.