The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.
A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.
A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.
Civil confusions often spring from trifles but decide great issues.
People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life.
The goodness or badness, justice or injustice, of laws varies of necessity with the constitution of states. This, however, is clear, that the laws must be adapted to the constitutions. But if so, true forms of government will of necessity have just laws, and perverted forms of government will have unjust laws.
The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.
One citizen differs from another, but the salvation of the community is the common business of them all. This community is the constitution; the virtue of the citizen must therefore be relative to the constitution of which he is a member.
When quarrels and complaints arise, it is when people who are equal have not got equal shares, or vice-versa.
