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.
We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.
Man is by nature a political animal.
Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.
Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.
Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.
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.
The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.
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.
The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
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.
In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.