Speeches are like babies-easy to conceive but hard to deliver.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

Everybody loves a thing more if it has cost him trouble: for instance those who have made money love money more than those who have inherited it.

Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine ACTIONS than in the non-performance of base ones.

Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.

Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.

Since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private - not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.