I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
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.
A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.
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.
A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.
No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects - things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language - either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.