Don't force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.

Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.

Lessons, however, that enter the soul against its will never grow roots and will never be preserved inside it.

The elements of instruction should be presented to the mind in childhood, but not with any compulsion.

Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.