But you have never troubled yourselves to do this; nay, you have so far mistaken your true interests that you are more pleased with those who cause you to be reviled than with those who cause you to be praised, and you think that those who have made many people hate the city are better friends of the demos than those who have inspired good will toward Athens in all with whom they have had to deal.

If, however, you are wise, you will put an end to this confusion, and you will not continue, as now, to take either a hostile or a contemptuous view of philosophy; on the contrary, you will conceive that the cultivation of the mind is the noblest and worthiest of pursuits and you will urge our young men who have sufficient means and who are able to take the time for it to embrace an education and a training of this sort.

And when they are willing to work hard and to prepare themselves to be of service to the city, you will make much of them; but when they give themselves to loose living and care for nothing else than to enjoy riotously what their fathers left to them, you will despise them and look upon them as false to the city and to the good name of their ancestors. For it will be hard enough, even though you show such an attitude of mind in either case, to get our youth to look down upon a life of ease and be willing to give their minds to their own improvement and to philosophy.