Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.

Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be false, the claim that there is no true assertion.

The high-minded man does not bear grudges, for it is not the mark of a great soul to remember injuries, but to forget them.

The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.

Anaximenes and Anaxagoras and Democritus say that its [the earth's] flatness is responsible for it staying still: for it does not cut the air beneath but covers it like a lid, which flat bodies evidently do: for they are hard to move even for the winds, on account of their resistance.

Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education.

We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence. But they hesitate, waiting for the other fellow to make the first move-and he, in turn, waits for you.