“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”

“those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight.”

“So where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice”

“Those who don't know must learn from those who do.”

“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

“In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society.”

“Those who tell the stories rule society.”