We can profit only by our own misfortunes and those of others. The former, though they may be the more beneficial, are also the more painful; let us turn, then, to the latter.

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.

For peace, with justice and honor, is the fairest and most profitable of possessions, but with disgrace and shameful cowardice, it is the most infamous and harmful of all.

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.

We can profit only by our own misfortunes and those of others. The former, though they may be the more beneficial, are also the more painful; let us turn, then, to the latter.

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.

When the ancients said a work well begun was half done, they meant to impress the importance of always endeavoring to make a good beginning.