There is truth in wine and children

By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name.

People too smart to get involved in politics are doomed to live in societies run by people who aren't.

For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.

Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors

I must yield to you, for you are irresistible.

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.