Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing.

All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.

They should rule who are able to rule best.

Bad people...are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.

The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward.

For good is simple, evil manifold.

If the state cannot be entirely composed of good men, and yet each citizen is expected to do his own business well, and must therefore have virtue, still inasmuch as all the citizens cannot be alike, the virtue of the citizen and of the good man cannot coincide. All must have the virtue of the good citizen - thus, and thus only, can the state be perfect; but they will not have the virtue of a good man, unless we assume that in the good state all the citizens must be good.