That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen.

The judge should not be young, he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others.

We must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things.

Pleasure is the bait of sin

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter. Said to have been inscribed above the door of Plato's Academy.

. . . the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.