The mob is easily led and may be moved by the smallest force, so that its agitations have a wonderful resemblance to those of the sea.

In our own time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there have neither been continuous wars nor epidemics...For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew.

Nor ought we ever to allow any growing power to acquire such a degree of strength as to be able to tear from us, without resistance, our natural, undisputed rights.

If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.

Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.

Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.

From this I conclude that the best education for the situations of actual life consists of the experience we acquire from the study of serious history. For it is history alone which without causing us harm enables us to judge what is the best course in any situation or circumstance.