But I marvel when I observe these men setting themselves up as instructors of youth who cannot see that they are applying the analogy of an art with hard and fast rules to a creative process
IsocratesRegard as your most faithful friends, not those who praise everything you say or do, but those who criticize your mistakes.
IsocratesThose who directed the state in the time of Solon and Cleisthenes did not establish a polity which ... trained the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and licence to do what they pleased as happiness, but rather a polity which detested and punished such men and by so doing made all the citizens better and wiser.
IsocratesIt is not fitting that the evil produced by men should be imputed to things; let those bear the blame who make an ill use of things in themselves good.
Isocrates