Plato
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.