Plutarch on Knowledge

"Alexander said, "I assure you I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion."

"Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity."

"And this," said Cæsar, "you know, young man, is more disagreeable for me to say than to do."

"When one asked him what boys should learn, "That," said he, "which they shall use when men."

"What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel."

"I myself had rather excel others in excellency of learning than in greatness of power."

"A remorseful change of mind renders even a noble action base, whereas the determination which is grounded on knowledge and reason cannot change even if its actions fail."

"Did you not know, then, that to-day Lucullus sups with Lucullus?"

"As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs."

"What meal is not expensive? That for which no animal is put to death. … one participating of feeling, of seeing, of hearing, of imagination, and of intellection; which each animal hath received from Nature for the acquiring of what is agreeable to it, and the avoiding what is disagreeable."

"By the study of their biographies, we receive each man as a guest into our minds, and we seem to understand their character as the result of a personal acquaintance, because we have obtained from their acts the best and most important means of forming an opinion about them. "What greater pleasure could'st thou gain than this?" What more valuable for the elevation of our own character?"

"Yet through Alexander Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks … Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Greek magistracies … Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city, for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence."