For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public chore, to be got over with. It is a way of life. It is the life of a domesticated political and social creature who is born with a love for public life, with a desire for honor, with a feeling for his fellows; and it lasts as long as need be.

He (Cato) never gave his opinion in the Senate upon any other point whatever, without adding these words, "And, in my opinion Carthage should be destroyed." ["Delenda est Carthago."]

This excerpt is presented as reproduced by Copernicus in the preface to De Revolutionibus: "Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center."

To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.