Works

The efficient cause of our salvation is God the Father's love; the material cause is God the Son's obedience; the instrumental cause is the Spirit's illumination (that is, faith); the final cause is the glory of God's great generosity; and those whom the Lord has destined by his mercy for the inheritance of eternal life he leads into possession of it (according to his ordinary dispensation) by the inferior causes of good works.

—John Calvin, Institutes, 3:14:21.

In other words, works are not what we do for God but what he does for us.

Unequal Distribution of Wealth

Rome itself was in the most dangerous inclination to change, on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth.

—Plutarch, Life of Cicero.

How to Rule the State

When the people are weak the state is strong; when the state is weak the people are strong. Hence the state that follows a true course strives to weaken the people.

—The Book of the Ruler of Shang, 4th century B.C.