Quote collection
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"It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge."
"To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute."
"All men desire by nature to know."
"So the good has been well explained as that at which all things aim."
"In seeking for justice men seek for the mean or neutral, for the law is the mean. Again, customary laws have more weight, and relate to more important matters, than written laws, and a man may be a safer ruler than the written law, but not safer than the customary law."
"Although it may be difficult in theory to know what is just and equal, the practical difficulty of inducing those to forbear who can, if they like, encroach, is far greater, for the weaker are always asking for equality and justice, but the stronger care for none of these things."
"While those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations."
"For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history."
"Man by nature wants to know."
"...for all men do their acts with a view to achieving something which is, in their view, a good."
"There is always something new coming out of Africa."
"There are still two forms besides democracy and oligarchy; one of them is universally recognized and included among the four principal forms of government, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or government of the best. But there is also a fifth, which retains the generic name of polity or constitutional government."
"The things best to know are first principles and causes, but these things are perhaps the most difficult for men to grasp, for they are farthest removed from the senses."
"We ought to be able to persuade on opposite sides of a question; as also we ought in the case of arguing by syllogism: not that we should practice both, for it is not right to persuade to what is bad; but in order that the bearing of the case may not escape us, and that when another makes an unfair use of these reasonings, we may be able to solve them."
"Every formed disposition of the soul realizes its full nature in relation to and dealing with that class of objects by which it is its nature to be corrupted or improved."
"For nature by the same cause, provided it remain in the same condition, always produces the same effect, so that either coming-to-be or passing-away will always result."
"Metaphor is halfway between the unintelligible and the commonplace."
"For through wondering human beings now and in the beginning have been led to philosophizing."
"The precepts of the law may be comprehended under these three points: to live honestly, to hurt no man willfully, and to render every man his due carefully."
"Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be false, the claim that there is no true assertion."