It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.

Knowledge without understanding is useless.

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection.

They whose minds are least sensitive to calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the greatest men and the greatest communities.

An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful.

For if many ill-conceived plans have succeeded through the still greater lack of judgment of an opponent, many more, apparently well laid, have on the contrary ended in disgrace. The confidence with which we form our schemes is never completely justified in their execution; speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes to action, fear causes failure.