Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers.

. . . Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded. . . .

Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

The only real ill-doing is the deprivation of knowledge.

Those who are not schooled and practised in truth [who are not honest and upright men] can never manage aright the government, nor yet can those who spend their lives as closet philosophers; because the former have no high purpose to guide their actions, while the latter keep aloof from public life.

We are too feeble and sluggish to make our way out to the upper limit of the air. If someone could reach the summit, or put on wings and fly aloft, when he put up his head he would see the world above, just as fishes see our world when they put up their heads out of the sea; and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognize that that is the true heaven.