In private matters everyone is equal before the law. In public matters, when it is a question of putting power and responsibility into the hands of one man rather than another, what counts is not rank or money, but the ability to do the job well.

Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing, but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.

Those who can think, but cannot express what they think, place themselves at the level of those who cannot think.

For grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed.

An Athenian citizen does not neglect his state because he takes care of his own household; even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We do not regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs as harmless. We do not say that such a man 'minds his own business'. Rather we say he has no business here at all.

Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now.

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.