It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

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.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

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.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

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.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Law is mind without reason.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

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.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.

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.