“Because it can be deceived, the majority is as error-prone as any other ruler, but unlike other rulers, it can never be destroyed.”

“A great poet can have the role of spiritual head of a nation.A great ruler is the spiritual head of a nation, and next to him there can be no other spiritual head.”

“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

“States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers.”

“that men, thinking to better their condition, are always ready to change masters, and in this expectation will take up arms against any ruler; wherein they deceive themselves, and find afterwards by experience that they are worse off than before.”

“We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.”