Aristotle Quotes

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing.

The error of Socrates must be attributed to the false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there should be, both of the family and of the state, but in some respects only. For there is a point at which a state may attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at which, without actually ceasing to exist, it will become an inferior state, like harmony passing into unison, or rhythm which has been reduced to a single foot. The state, as I was saying, is a plurality which should be united and made into a community by education

Without a common loyalty to either a state or a church they have nevertheless a vast deal in common.

We must remember that North Carolina is more than a collection of regions and people. We are one state, one people, one family, bound by a common concern for each other.

To run an effective political party you need a degree of tribalism, it's the glue that holds everyone together.

He who would dare to undertake to establish a nation would have to feel himself capable of altering, so to speak, human nature, to transform each individual, who by his very nature is a unique and perfect whole, into a mere part of a greater whole, from which this individual would in a sense receive his life and his being.

It is a community of purpose that constitutes society.

Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own.

… the government that divides us least

After eight years as your president, I still believe that there is much more that unites us than divides us.

We say that a group united and developed in the royal way, by forces of nature, is a race; a group united and developed by way of might, by human forces, is a state. This, then, is the difference between a race or nationality and a state.

It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.

Only the home can found a state.

Anarchism and anthropology go well together because anthropologists know that a society without a state is possible because so many exist.

If globalization is a sphere, where each point is equidistant from the centre, then it isn't good because it annuls each of us. But if globalization joins us as a polyhedron where we're all together but conserves the dignity of each ... that's good.

Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals.

History teaches that a race of people is best preserved where the greater number hold one common spirit in consequence of the similarity of their accustomed and indisputable principles.

Society in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.

There is such a thing as society. It's just not the same thing as the state.

The nation will continue to be a central pole of identification, even if more and more nations come to share common economic and political forms of organization.

For the real difference between humans and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust, etc. It is the sharing of a common view in these matters that makes a household and a state.

I think that to the extent that we focus on problems where we can build a moral and a political consensus, then I think that we move the country forward and when we are divided and our politics is focused on dividing, then I think we're less successful, not just from the perspective of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party but from the perspective of the nation as a whole.

We are more united than ever before. I think this was exemplified in a very moving way when the members of our Congress stood shoulder to shoulder the other day and sang God Bless America.

Unity is plural and, at a minimum, is two.

Our predecessors understood that the ties that bind America are far stronger than disagreements over any particular policy and far more durable and profound than any party affiliation.