76
You will confer the greatest benefits on.your city, not by raising its roofs, but by exalting its souls. For it is better that great souls should live in small habitations, than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses.
77
Do not variegate the structure of your walls with Euboean and Spartan stone, but adorn both the minds of the citizens and of those who govern them by the Greek culture. For cities are made good habitations by the sentiments of those who live in them, not by wood or stone.
78
As, if you were to breed lions, you would not be solicitous about the magnificence of their dens, but about the qualities of the animals; so, if you undertake to preside over your fellow-citizens, be not so solicitous about the magnificence of the buildings as careful of the nobleness of those who inhabit them.
79
As a skilful manager of horses does not feed the good colts, and suffer the unruly ones to starve, but feeds them both alike, chastising the one more, to make him draw equally with his fellow; so a man of foresight and administrative skill endeavors to do good to the well-disposed citizens, but not at once to destroy those that are otherwise. He by no means denies subsistence to either of them; only he disciplines and urges on, with the greater vehemence, him who resists reason and the laws.
80
As a goose is not alarmed by hissing, nor a sheep by bleating, so neither be you terrified by the voice of a senseless multitude.
