Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Many people are forced to do jobs that they don’t like—just to make both ends meet.

Sometimes we buy things to impress people we may not even know.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Nature does nothing in vain.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way.

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.

He who hath many friends hath none.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

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

Bad men are full of repentance.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

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.

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

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Education is the best provision for old age.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.