And among the other honours and rewards our young men can win for distinguished service in war and in other activities, will be more frequent opportunities to sleep with a woman; this will give us a pretext for ensuring that most of our children are born of that parent.

[The Cretans have] more wit than words.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.

The well-nurtured youth is one who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he became a man of gentle heart.

There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who, when danger is pressing in, will not acknowledge the divine power.

If you ask: What is the good of education? The answer is easy: Education makes good men and good men act nobly.