It’s a poor doctor who can’t cure one disease without giving you another.

The Utopians fail to understand why anyone should be so fascinated by the dull gleam of a tiny bit of stone, when he has all the stars in the sky to look at.

The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.

It is not possible for all things to be well unless all men were good.

Natural, as they define it, is synonymous with virtuous.

Human nature constitutes a treaty in itself, and human beings are far more effectively united by kindness than by contracts, by feelings than by words.

Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody’s under the frightful necessity of becoming first a thief and then a corpse.

The same trade generally passes down from father to son, inclinations often following descent: but if any man’s genius lies another way he is, by adoption, translated into a family that deals in the trade to which he is inclined;.

Your friend Plato holds that commonwealths will only be happy when either philosophers rule or rulers philosophize: how remote happiness must appear when philosophers won’t even deign to share their thoughts with kings.

No man shall be blamed in the maintenance of his own religion.