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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.
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
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.
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Nature does nothing in vain.