Quote collection
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"For well-being and health, again, the homestead should be airy in summer, and sunny in winter. A homestead possessing these qualities would be longer than it is deep; and its main front would face the south."
"Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved."
"Of the irrational part of the soul again one division appears to be common to all living things, and of a vegetative nature."
"So, if we must give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first actuality [entelechy] of anatural organized body."
"The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state."
"Anybody can get hit over the head."
"No one chooses what does not rest with himself, but only what he thinks can be attained by his own act."
"The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them."
"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."
"By 'life,' we mean a thing that can nourish itself and grow and decay."
"The laws are, and ought to be, relative to the constitution, and not the constitution to the laws. A constitution is the organization of offices in a state, and determines what is to be the governing body, and what is the end of each community. But laws are not to be confounded with the principles of the constitution; they are the rules according to which the magistrates should administer the state, and proceed against offenders."
"When the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name - a constitution."
"It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia."
"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."
"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."
"It is no easy task to be good."
"Friends enhance our ability to think and act."
"That which is excellent endures."
"The angry man wishes the object of his anger to suffer in return; hatred wishes its object not to exist."
"Nothing is what rocks dream about"