A conversation between Cyrus and his father King Cambyses:

Cyrus is known to be one of the world's greatest personalities. In fact he is also referred to by some as the greatest man in the history of mankind. He lived even before the times of Alexander and built a vast empire, much of which was only conquered by Alexander, years later. But still, he is not as popular as Alexander. I just wanted to share an extract from the book Cyrus the Great by Samuel Willard Crompton:

A conversation between Cyrus and his father King Cambyses:

There is no shorter road, my son, than really to be wise in
those things in which you wish to seem wise; and when
you examine concrete instances, you will realize that what
I say is true. For example, if you wish to seem to be a good
farmer when you are not, or a good rider, doctor, flute-player,
or anything else that you are not, just think of how many
schemes you must invent to keep up your pretensions. And
even if you should persuade any number of people to praise
you, in order to give yourself a reputation, and if you should
procure a fine outfit for each of your professions, you would
soon be found to have practiced deception; and not long
after, when you were giving an exhibition of your skill, you
would be shown up and convicted, too, as an imposter.

The basic theme of this discourse resounds in the words of
Abraham Lincoln, uttered more than 2,000 years later: “You can
fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people
some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the
time.” But Xenephon wrote this long before Lincoln expressed
the idea, and, given that Lincoln was a voracious reader, it’s possible
he obtained part of the idea from reading Xenephon.