Aristotle

It is a mark of a tyrant to have men of foreign extraction rather than citizens as guests at table and companions, feeling that citizens are hostile but strangers make no claim against him.

Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

Demagogues arise in cities where the laws are not sovereign. The people then becomes a monarchy - a single composite monarch made up of many members, with the many playing the sovereign, not as individuals, but collectively. It is not clear what Homer means when he says that "it is not good to have the rule of many masters": whether he has in mind a situation of this kind, or one where there are many rulers who act as individuals.

One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are equal absolutely [in all respects]."

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

Nature does nothing uselessly.