"Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune."

"He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden."

"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous."

"Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another."

"People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die."

"Philosophy is the highest music."

"The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable."

"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector."

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet."

"Your silence gives consent."

"No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding."

"He was a wise man who invented beer."

"For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions."

"Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation."

"When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure."

"It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn."

"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education."

"The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort."

"The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so."

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."

"Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice."

"Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom."

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

"Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety."

"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way."

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."

"There is no harm in repeating a good thing."

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."

"Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom."

"He who is not a good servant will not be a good master."

"Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others."

"The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not."

"Death is not the worst that can happen to men."

"If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals."

"The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless."

"Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder."

"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."

"To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less."

"The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men."

"The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine."

"When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."

"Knowledge is true opinion."

"Necessity... the mother of invention."

"He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power."

"Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue."

"It is right to give every man his due."

"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."

"Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child."

"There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself."

"A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants."