“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.”

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

There is truth in wine and children.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being.

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away. A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Time is the moving image of reality.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.

The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.

Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people’s behavior, it would all make sense.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.

Even though human life may be the most precious thing on earth, we always behave as if there were something of higher value than human life.

A person who is knowingly bent on bad behavior, gets upset when better behavior is expected of them.