Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible.

Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them. A true friend is one soul in two bodies

The gods too are fond of a joke.

Men in general desire the good and not merely what their fathers had.

Education is the best provision for old age.

Education and morals make the good man, the good statesman, the good ruler.

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.