If we are to keep our flock at the highest pitch of excellence, there should be as many unions of the best of both sexes, and as few of the inferior as possible, and that only the offspring of the better unions should be kept.

The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.

To do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it.

When you swear, swear seriously and solemnly, but at the same time with a smile, for a smile is the twin sister of seriousness.

And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life. Not because the law of the state requires him. Nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him. Nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty.

The first step in learning is the destruction of human conceit.

Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself.