It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

All human happiness and misery take the form of action.

Those that deem politics beneath their dignity are doomed to be governed by those of lesser talents.

Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.

We deliberate not about ends, but about means.

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit