The sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

That which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government, and yet in our own day this principle is universally neglected. The best laws, though sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution.

It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war; but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not organized.

All art is concerned with coming into being.

Thus then a single harmony orders the composition of the whole...by the mingling of the most contrary principles.

There are no experienced young people. Time makes experience.