"Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety."


"Those who tell the stories rule society."


"A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand."


"I used to imagine that no human can make men good; but I know better now."


"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way."


"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men."


"The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams."


"Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle."


"I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools."


"Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence."


"Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the fill the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas receives nothing from like.,."


"No one ever dies an atheist."


"This is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.,."


"The man deserved his fate, deny it who can; yes, but the fate did not deserve the man."


"Everyone thinks because it is solely responsible for the wisdom or folly of his life, that is to say of his destiny."


"I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger."


"Doesn’t it follow that a ship’s captain or ruler won’t seek and order what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to a sailor? No one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subjects; the ones of whom he is himself the craftsman. It is to his subjects and what is advantageous and proper to them that he looks, and everything he says and does he says and does for them."


"The good are like one another, and friends to one another; and ... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing.,."


"Philosophers are the ones who can reach what always stays the same in every respect, and non- philosophers the ones who cannot, who wonder among the many things that go in every direction."


"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man."


"The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods."


"The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation."


"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."


"It is impossible to improve the world if first the man does not improve."


"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder."


"Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle."


"A principle which has any soundness should stand firm not only just now, but always."


"The only real ill-doing is the deprivation of knowledge."


"Have you not perceived that imitations, whether of bodily gestures, tones of voice, or modes of thought, if they be persevered in from an early age, are apt to grow into habits and a second nature?"


"Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know."


"All enquiry and all learning is but recollection."


"You don’t seem to love money too much. And those who haven’t made their own money are usually like you. But those who have made it for themselves are twice as fond of it as those who haven’t."


"The desire for sex turns the penis into a disobedient thing with a mind of its own. Like an animal that will not listen .it tries to take complete control."


"This is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.,."


"By harming a horse, you decrease his excellence. Thus, by harming a person, you decrease their excellence."


"Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness."


"I must go beyond the dark world of sense information to the clear brilliance of the sunlight of the outside world. Once done, it becomes my duty to go back to the cave in order to illuminate the minds of those imprisoned in the ‘darkness’ of sensory knowledge."


"They think that you bear old age more easily not because of the way you live but because you’re wealthy, for the wealthy, they say, have many consolations."


"If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes."


"The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods."


"Men say that everyone is naturally a lover of himself, and that it is right that it should be so. This is a mistake; for in fact the cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved, so that he passes a wrong judgment upon what is just, good, and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honor what belongs to himself, in preference to truth. For he who intends to be a great man ought to love neither himself nor his own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by himself or by another."


"He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it."


"Appearance tyrannizes over truth."


"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."


"No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return."


"He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse."


"The good are like one another, and friends to one another; and ... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing.,."


"The harder you work, the luckier you get."


"You ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the eyes, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul."


"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is god, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but never less, dazzling, passionate, and eternal form."


"I have good hope that there is something after death."


"A work well begun is half ended."


"Love is of something, and that which love desires is not that which love is or has; for no man desires that which he is or has."


"A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books."


"The greatest wealth is to live content with little."


"It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke."


"There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good."


"Philosophy is the highest music."


"He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself."


"Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool."


"How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem."


"The plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins."


"You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken. Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?"


"States are as the men, they grow out of human characters."


"They think that you bear old age more easily not because of the way you live but because you’re wealthy, for the wealthy, they say, have many consolations."


"Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness."


"Human behavior flows from three main sources desire, emotion, and knowledge."


"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter."


"For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories."


"Knowledge is the food of the soul."


"Let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly."


"I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense."


"No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern."


"No one ever dies an atheist."


"You ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the eyes, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul."


"Each person must tend to the business that accords with his nature."


"There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it?"


"He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act."


"When I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such a one I deem to be the true musician, having in himself a fairer harmony than that of the lyre.,."


"There's no chance of their having a conscious glimpse of the truth as long as they refuse to disturb the things they take for granted and remain incapable of explaining them. For if your starting point is unknown, and your end-point and intermediate stages are woven together out of unknown material, there may be coherence, but knowledge is completely out of the question."


"There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."


"An accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men."


"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."


"The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself."


"You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters."


"No tools will make a man a skilled workmen, or master of defense, or be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them and has never bestowed any attention on them."


"Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike."


"Human behavior flows from three main sources desire, emotion, and knowledge."


"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant."


"It's not at all uncommon to find a person's desires compelling him to go against his reason, and to see him cursing himself and venting his passion on the source of the compulsion within him. It's as if there were two warring factions, with passion fighting on the side of reason."


"Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended."


"Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors."


"Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom."


"Isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is?"


"Music then is simply the result of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony."


"Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."


"Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been."


"He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it."


"The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge."


"States are as the men, they grow out of human characters."


"When you admonish a wrongdoer, do so gently, that it may not lead to hostility."


"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is god, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but never less, dazzling, passionate, and eternal form."


"A principle which has any soundness should stand firm not only just now, but always."


"No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern."


"Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul."


"Friends have all things in common."


"Because people want more and more possessions, they start wanting more money, and thus honor money more and excellence less. Accordingly, the wealthy become more honored, and the people of excellence less honored. With the majority now money-loving businessmen instead of lovers of victory and honor, the admirable rich men will be put into office, and the poor will be dishonored."


"They cross-examine a man’s words, when he thinks that he is saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then collect by the dialectical process, and placing them side by side, show that they contradict one another about the same things, in relation to the same things, and in the same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with himself, and grows gentle towards others, and thus is entirely delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is most amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good effect on the person who is the subject of the operation."


"Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike."


"It is only the dead who have seen the end of war."


"The eyes are the windows of the soul."


"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."


"All learning is in the learner, not the teacher."


"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."


"A life without investigation is not worth living."


"Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?"


"A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something."


"If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes."


"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.,."


"If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things."


"The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity."


"When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."


"Not only is the old man twice a child, but also the man who is drunk."


"Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence."


"You ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the eyes, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul."


"Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold and have escaped, not from one master, but from many."


"Whenever anyone informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation."


"All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance."


"Character is simply habit long continued."


"Knowledge is the food of the soul."


"Arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up."


"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another."


"Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions."


"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men."


"Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue."


"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."


"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant."


"Love is a madness produced by an unclassifiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world."


"Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest."


"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."


"'Excellence' is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act 'rightly' because we are 'excellent', in fact we achieve 'excellence' by acting 'rightly'."


"He whom love touches not walks in darkness."


"It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.,."


"Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise."


"There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it?"


"Will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice?"


"Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him."


"Excellence of understanding comes from something divine, whereas the other excellences are probably close to the body."


"The excellence and righteousness for each thing depend solely on the use for which it was created. This naturally means that the user has the most experience of it and must tell the maker how it works best."


"We shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know;— that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power."


"Philosophers are the ones who can reach what always stays the same in every respect, and non- philosophers the ones who cannot, who wonder among the many things that go in every direction."


"Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or better than cohesion and unity?"


"The key is not to live but to live well."


"A house that has a library in it has a soul."


"All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance."


"Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."


"True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable."


"Lust is inseparably accompanied with the troubling of all order, with impudence, unseemliness, sloth, and dissoluteness."


"Either never, or very seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better than the quick and energetic ones."


"We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it."


"Artist or sage or ruler errs at the time when he is what his name implies."


"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."


"The purpose of education is to give to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable."


"Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting."


"The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good."


"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."


"Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large."


"I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true."


"I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it."


"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is god, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but never less, dazzling, passionate, and eternal form."


"The measure of a man is what he does with power."


"As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves."


"The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings."


"Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being."


"The constrained performance of bodily labour does, it is true, exert no evil influence on the body; but in the case of the mind, no study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory."


"If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist?"


"When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them."


"Because people want more and more possessions, they start wanting more money, and thus honor money more and excellence less. Accordingly, the wealthy become more honored, and the people of excellence less honored. With the majority now money-loving businessmen instead of lovers of victory and honor, the admirable rich men will be put into office, and the poor will be dishonored."


"A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbor."


"As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser."


"Those who tell the stories rule society."


"Haven't you noticed that opinion without knowledge is always a poor thing? At the best it is blind—isn't anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding like a blind man on the right road?"


"Think only of the ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal."


"Observe that open loves are held to be more honorable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honorable."


"The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things."


"Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand."


"Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness."


"Nothing could be more important than that the work of a soldier is well done."


"All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince."


"'Excellence' is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act 'rightly' because we are 'excellent', in fact we achieve 'excellence' by acting 'rightly'."


"Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine arts; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing? Are they not all the works of his wisdom, born and begotten of him? And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?"


"Knowledge is the food of the soul."


"The souls of people, on their way to Earth-life, pass through a room full of lights; each takes a taper, often only a spark, to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls, by rare fortune, are detained longer, have time to grasp a handful of tapers, which they weave into a torch. These are the torch-bearers of humanity, its poets, seers, and saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, toward the light. They are the law-givers and saviors, the light-bringers, way-showers and truth-tellers, and without them, humanity would lose its way in the dark."


"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."


"It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn. The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."


"Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions."


"Isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is?"


"Self-conquest is the greatest of victories."


"Great crimes and pure evil come only from vigorous natures perverted by upbringing; a weak nature never does anything great, good or evil."


"Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others."


"Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls."


"Philosophers are the ones who can reach what always stays the same in every respect, and non- philosophers the ones who cannot, who wonder among the many things that go in every direction."


"All learning is in the learner, not the teacher."


"At the touch of love, Everyone becomes a poet."


"Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been."


"Music then is simply the result of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony."


"I perplex others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself."


"Philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life."


"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."


"When you admonish a wrongdoer, do so gently, that it may not lead to hostility."


"I don't think we shall quarrel about a word the subject of our inquiry is too important for that."


"Excellence of understanding comes from something divine, whereas the other excellences are probably close to the body."


"As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser."


"How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem."


"The souls of people, on their way to Earth-life, pass through a room full of lights; each takes a taper, often only a spark, to guide it in the dim country of this world. But some souls, by rare fortune, are detained longer, have time to grasp a handful of tapers, which they weave into a torch. These are the torch-bearers of humanity, its poets, seers, and saints, who lead and lift the race out of darkness, toward the light. They are the law-givers and saviors, the light-bringers, way-showers and truth-tellers, and without them, humanity would lose its way in the dark."


"The greatest penalty of evildoing; namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men."


"What kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and who would be pleased to refute anyone who says anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn’t be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else from it."


"Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil."


"When the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge? Is not that the inference?"


"The true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and, at last, knows what the essence of beauty is."


"Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."


"The man deserved his fate, deny it who can; yes, but the fate did not deserve the man."


"It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death."


"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."


"If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonor, and emulating one another in honor; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?"


"There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it?"


"There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help and what they cannot."


"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man."


"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments."


"Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding."


"Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god."


"He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it."


"I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true."


"The matter is as it is in all other cases: If it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.,."


"Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil."


"Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself agreeable to them; for from the good you will learn what is good, but if you mix with the bad you will lose the intelligence which you already have."


"There are three arts which are concerned with all things. One which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them."


"We shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know;— that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power."


"All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince."


"Yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route."


"Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them? people regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust, about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them."


"What shall we say about those spectators, then, who can see a plurality of beautiful things, but not beauty itself, and who are incapable of following if someone else tries to lead them to it, and who can see many moral actions, but not morality itself, and so on? That they only ever entertain beliefs, and do not know any of the things they believe?"


"Assuredly he will love that most whose interests he regards as identical with his own, and in whose prosperity or adversity he believes his own fortunes to be involved."


"Will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice?"


"The useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base."


"A life without investigation is not worth living."


"By harming a horse, you decrease his excellence. Thus, by harming a person, you decrease their excellence."


"Those whose hearts are fixed on reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers."


"'Excellence' is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act 'rightly' because we are 'excellent', in fact we achieve 'excellence' by acting 'rightly'."


"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools."


"If the truth of all things that are is always in our soul, then the soul must be immortal, so you should take courage and whatever you do not happen to know, that is to remember, at present, you must endeavor to discover and recollect I cannot swear to everything I have said in this argument but one thing I am ready to fight for in word and deed, that we shall be better, braver and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we do not know, than if we think we cannot discover it and have no duty to seek it."


"The key is not to live but to live well."


"Is there any self-existent fire? and do all those things which we call self-existent exist? or are only those things which we see, or in some way perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothing whatever besides them? And is all that which we call an intelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name?"


"Never discourage anyone. who continually makes progress, no matter how slow."


"All learning is in the learner, not the teacher."


"Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another."


"Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being."


"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions."


"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."


"I must go beyond the dark world of sense information to the clear brilliance of the sunlight of the outside world. Once done, it becomes my duty to go back to the cave in order to illuminate the minds of those imprisoned in the ‘darkness’ of sensory knowledge."


"The man who makes everything that leads to happiness, depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom."


"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."


"God is the cause only of good."


"The State which we have founded must possess the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, discipline and justice ... Justice is the principle which has in fact been followed throughout, the principle of one man one job, of minding ones own business, in the sense of doing the job for which one is naturally fitted and not interfering with other people."


"Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself agreeable to them; for from the good you will learn what is good, but if you mix with the bad you will lose the intelligence which you already have."


"Justice, although it resembles a mirage, is really concerned with internal rather than external activity, with the true self and its business."


"The thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer, but the doer must be at the beck of the thing to be done, and not treat it as a secondary affair."


"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another."


"Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it."


"A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbor."


"He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god."


"Philosophers are the ones who can reach what always stays the same in every respect, and non- philosophers the ones who cannot, who wonder among the many things that go in every direction."


"The truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing."


"The plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins."


"Isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is?"


"The rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know."


"This is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.,."


"This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related."


"Love is the joy of the good the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods."


"God is the cause only of good."


"Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence."


"Certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden."


"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song."


"When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil."


"Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold and have escaped, not from one master, but from many."


"The desire for sex turns the penis into a disobedient thing with a mind of its own. Like an animal that will not listen .it tries to take complete control."


"Wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man could ever err, and therefore, he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be wisdom no longer.,."


"You ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the eyes, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul."


"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."


"No man should bring children into world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education."


"Good actions can strengthen ourselves and inspire good actions to others."


"Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended."


"Most men in power become villains."


Plato Quotes

Two quotes a day keep the lack of wisdom at bay.


"There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who when danger is pressing in will not acknowledge the divine power."


"I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true."


"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."


"Human behavior flows from three main sources desire, emotion, and knowledge."


"Music then is simply the result of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony."


"If a man says that it is right to give everyone his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one."


"Justice, although it resembles a mirage, is really concerned with internal rather than external activity, with the true self and its business."


"All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance."


"If people despise money when young, but grow to love it more and more as they grow older and no longer devote themselves to excellence as the best guardian, the power of reasoned, educated speech, leaves them."


"Evil is more opposed to the good than to the no-good."


"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous."


"So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funneled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on his energy and initiative of mind, if he has any, is to soften it as iron is softened in a furnace, and made workable instead of hard and unworkable: but if he persists and does not break the enchantment, the next stage is that it melts and runs, till the spirit has quite run out of him and his mental sinews are cut.,."


"Those who tell the stories rule society."


"Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half."


"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."


"Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting."


"He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him."


"Is there a perfect world?"


"There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who when danger is pressing in will not acknowledge the divine power."


"Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures."


"A freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."


"No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes."


"They think that you bear old age more easily not because of the way you live but because you’re wealthy, for the wealthy, they say, have many consolations."


"We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue."


"I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools."


"Have you not perceived that imitations, whether of bodily gestures, tones of voice, or modes of thought, if they be persevered in from an early age, are apt to grow into habits and a second nature?"


"When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."


"If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest."


"Must not all things at last be swallowed up in Death?"


"No tools will make a man a skilled workmen, or master of defense, or be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them and has never bestowed any attention on them."


"Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding."


"By harming a horse, you decrease his excellence. Thus, by harming a person, you decrease their excellence."


"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."


"Self-conquest is the greatest of victories."


"The desires of the worthless many are controlled by the desires and knowledge of the decent few."


"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life."


"Not only is the old man twice a child, but also the man who is drunk."


"Courage is a kind of salvation. Courage is knowing what not to fear."


"I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning."


"Any peace is better than any war."


"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."


"Books are immortal sons defying their sires."


"Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality."


"The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and hope..."


"He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself."


"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."


"You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters."


"Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest."


"Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains; some in desires, and some in fears; and some are cowards under the same conditions."


"You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken. Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?"


"What kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and who would be pleased to refute anyone who says anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn’t be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else from it."


"The State which we have founded must possess the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, discipline and justice ... Justice is the principle which has in fact been followed throughout, the principle of one man one job, of minding ones own business, in the sense of doing the job for which one is naturally fitted and not interfering with other people."


"Philosophy is the highest music."


"I don't think we shall quarrel about a word the subject of our inquiry is too important for that."


"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."


"Everyone thinks because it is solely responsible for the wisdom or folly of his life, that is to say of his destiny."


"The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge."


"He whom love touches not walks in darkness."


"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments."


"You don’t seem to love money too much. And those who haven’t made their own money are usually like you. But those who have made it for themselves are twice as fond of it as those who haven’t."


"Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls."


"I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense."


"They cross-examine a man’s words, when he thinks that he is saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then collect by the dialectical process, and placing them side by side, show that they contradict one another about the same things, in relation to the same things, and in the same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with himself, and grows gentle towards others, and thus is entirely delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is most amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good effect on the person who is the subject of the operation."


"Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honorable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them."


"Certainly we shall have to look to ourselves, and try to find someone who will help in some way or other to improve us."


"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."


"They master certain pleasures because they are mastered by others, I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that they only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom ."


"Hope,' he says, 'cherishes the soul of him who lives justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey; hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man."


"Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service."


"In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by. philosophy to complete uselessness as members of society."


"It seems to me that many fall into it even against their will, and fancy they are discussing, when they are merely debating, because they cannot distinguish the meanings of a term, in their investigation of any question, but carry on their opposition to what is stated, by attacking the mere words, employing the art of debate, and not that of philosophical discussion."


"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."


"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."


"I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it."


"Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul."


"The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams."


"Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly."


"Character is simply habit long continued."


"Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine arts; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing? Are they not all the works of his wisdom, born and begotten of him? And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?"


"It's not at all uncommon to find a person's desires compelling him to go against his reason, and to see him cursing himself and venting his passion on the source of the compulsion within him. It's as if there were two warring factions, with passion fighting on the side of reason."


"This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related."


"Certainly we shall have to look to ourselves, and try to find someone who will help in some way or other to improve us."


"Most men in power become villains."


"They cross-examine a man’s words, when he thinks that he is saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then collect by the dialectical process, and placing them side by side, show that they contradict one another about the same things, in relation to the same things, and in the same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with himself, and grows gentle towards others, and thus is entirely delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is most amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good effect on the person who is the subject of the operation."


"Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding."


"All learning has an emotional base."


"No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself."


"Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it, but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them."


"If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life."


"Evil is more opposed to the good than to the no-good."


"It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn. The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."


"Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence."


"The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."


"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life."


"'Excellence' is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act 'rightly' because we are 'excellent', in fact we achieve 'excellence' by acting 'rightly'."


"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."


"Life is a short exile."


"Death is not the worst that can happen to men."


"All knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom."


"Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle."


"Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or better than cohesion and unity?"


"Democracy passes into despotism."


"If the truth of all things that are is always in our soul, then the soul must be immortal, so you should take courage and whatever you do not happen to know, that is to remember, at present, you must endeavor to discover and recollect I cannot swear to everything I have said in this argument but one thing I am ready to fight for in word and deed, that we shall be better, braver and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we do not know, than if we think we cannot discover it and have no duty to seek it."


"The love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another."


"Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended."


"Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god."


"The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation."


"We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it."


"Philosophy is the highest music."


"Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine arts; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing? Are they not all the works of his wisdom, born and begotten of him? And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?"


"Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them? people regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust, about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them."


"There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."


"As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him."


"Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?"


"Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being."


"The measure of a man is what he does with power."


"Science is nothing but perception."


"The greatest penalty of evildoing; namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men."


"The thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer, but the doer must be at the beck of the thing to be done, and not treat it as a secondary affair."


"I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools."


"The truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing."


"Philosophers are the ones who can reach what always stays the same in every respect, and non- philosophers the ones who cannot, who wonder among the many things that go in every direction."


"Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle."


"Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honorable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them."


"He that lendeth to another in time of prosperity, shall never want help himself in the time of adversity."


"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."


"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery."


"If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest."


"Let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly."


"As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves."


"It is only the dead who have seen the end of war."


"It is only just that anything that up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes no one."


"Most men in power become villains."


"null"


"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men."


"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."


"Observe that open loves are held to be more honorable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honorable."


"It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death."


"If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things."


"By harming a horse, you decrease his excellence. Thus, by harming a person, you decrease their excellence."


"Character is simply habit long continued."


"Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends."


"When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil."


"Appearance tyrannizes over truth."


"Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others."


"The life which is unexamined is not worth living."


"No knowledge considers or prescribes for the advantage of the stronger, but for that of the weaker, which it rules."


"You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters."


"I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with."


"The measure of a man is what he does with power."


"The true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and, at last, knows what the essence of beauty is."


"Haven't you noticed that opinion without knowledge is always a poor thing? At the best it is blind—isn't anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding like a blind man on the right road?"


"No one ever dies an atheist."


"True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable."


"But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?"


"He whom love touches not walks in darkness."


"All learning has an emotional base."


"Doesn’t it follow that a ship’s captain or ruler won’t seek and order what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to a sailor? No one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subjects; the ones of whom he is himself the craftsman. It is to his subjects and what is advantageous and proper to them that he looks, and everything he says and does he says and does for them."


"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way."


"The man who makes everything that leads to happiness, depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom."


"A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers."


"Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors."


"The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings."


"All enquiry and all learning is but recollection."


"Wealth, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent."


"An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers."


"A work well begun is half ended."


"This feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."


"The thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer, but the doer must be at the beck of the thing to be done, and not treat it as a secondary affair."


"Nothing could be more important than that the work of a soldier is well done."


"He who is not a good servant will not be a good master."


"The plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins."


"All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince."


"The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge."


"Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine arts; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing? Are they not all the works of his wisdom, born and begotten of him? And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?"


"This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related."


"Each person must tend to the business that accords with his nature."


"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man."


"Will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice?"


"Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions."


"If people despise money when young, but grow to love it more and more as they grow older and no longer devote themselves to excellence as the best guardian, the power of reasoned, educated speech, leaves them."


"Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil."


"The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below."


"I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense."


"It seems to me that many fall into it even against their will, and fancy they are discussing, when they are merely debating, because they cannot distinguish the meanings of a term, in their investigation of any question, but carry on their opposition to what is stated, by attacking the mere words, employing the art of debate, and not that of philosophical discussion."


"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder."


"Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom."


"The perfect state is one where men weep and rejoice over the same things."


"No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong. Only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again."


"There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who when danger is pressing in will not acknowledge the divine power."


"'Excellence' is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act 'rightly' because we are 'excellent', in fact we achieve 'excellence' by acting 'rightly'."


"No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern."


"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.,."


"True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable."


"I don't think we shall quarrel about a word the subject of our inquiry is too important for that."


"No tools will make a man a skilled workmen, or master of defense, or be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them and has never bestowed any attention on them."


"How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem."


"The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity."


"If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes."


"The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods."


"Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue."


"A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand."


"Excellence of understanding comes from something divine, whereas the other excellences are probably close to the body."


"The useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base."


"This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related."


"Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise."


"I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense."


"Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it."


"When you admonish a wrongdoer, do so gently, that it may not lead to hostility."


"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous."


"Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom."


"Think only of the ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal."


"Love is a madness produced by an unclassifiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world."


"Self-conquest is the greatest of victories."


"Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly."


"I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it."


"Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them? people regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust, about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them."


"It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn. The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."


"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter."


"Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest."


"Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle."


"Great crimes and pure evil come only from vigorous natures perverted by upbringing; a weak nature never does anything great, good or evil."


"Excellence must be the health and wellbeing of the soul."


"The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful."


"Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise."


"The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth."


"All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue."


"Science is nothing but perception."


"You should not honor men more than truth."


"In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection."


"Honesty is for the most part, less profitable than dishonesty."


"Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike."


"Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls."


"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder."


"If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonor, and emulating one another in honor; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?"


"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."


"Wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man could ever err, and therefore, he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be wisdom no longer.,."


"As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves."


"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."


"You don’t seem to love money too much. And those who haven’t made their own money are usually like you. But those who have made it for themselves are twice as fond of it as those who haven’t."


"Love is the joy of the good the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods."


"A house that has a library in it has a soul."


"By harming a horse, you decrease his excellence. Thus, by harming a person, you decrease their excellence."


"He who is not a good servant will not be a good master."


"Wealth, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent."


"Men say that everyone is naturally a lover of himself, and that it is right that it should be so. This is a mistake; for in fact the cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved, so that he passes a wrong judgment upon what is just, good, and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honor what belongs to himself, in preference to truth. For he who intends to be a great man ought to love neither himself nor his own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by himself or by another."


"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."


"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.,."


"Isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is?"


"Good actions can strengthen ourselves and inspire good actions to others."


"If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life."


"Friends have all things in common."


"Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting."


"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."


"The good are like one another, and friends to one another; and ... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing.,."


"Everyone thinks because it is solely responsible for the wisdom or folly of his life, that is to say of his destiny."


"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man."


"Arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up."


"How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem."


"The desire for sex turns the penis into a disobedient thing with a mind of its own. Like an animal that will not listen .it tries to take complete control."


"The harder you work, the luckier you get."


"The only real ill-doing is the deprivation of knowledge."


"Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the fine arts; for no one can give to another that which he has not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. Who will deny that the creation of the animals is his doing? Are they not all the works of his wisdom, born and begotten of him? And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?"


"Even the gods love jokes."


"Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honorable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them."


"When the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge? Is not that the inference?"


"The constrained performance of bodily labour does, it is true, exert no evil influence on the body; but in the case of the mind, no study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory."


"The reason is that they utter these words of theirs not by virtue of a skill, but by a divine power - otherwise, if they knew how to speak well on one topic thanks to a skill, they would know how to speak about every other topic too."


"Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality."


"The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams."


"Those whose hearts are fixed on reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers."


"Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large."


"You don’t seem to love money too much. And those who haven’t made their own money are usually like you. But those who have made it for themselves are twice as fond of it as those who haven’t."


"The plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins."


"The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good."


"Whenever anyone informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation."


"The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death."


"Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls."


"If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake."


"I used to imagine that no human can make men good; but I know better now."


"'Excellence' is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act 'rightly' because we are 'excellent', in fact we achieve 'excellence' by acting 'rightly'."


"They cross-examine a man’s words, when he thinks that he is saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then collect by the dialectical process, and placing them side by side, show that they contradict one another about the same things, in relation to the same things, and in the same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with himself, and grows gentle towards others, and thus is entirely delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is most amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good effect on the person who is the subject of the operation."


"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments."


"Harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees."


"I am smart because I know I nothing."


"It is only the dead who have seen the end of war."


"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."


"To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils."


"First and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things the most shameful and objectionable."


"We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it."


"I don't think we shall quarrel about a word the subject of our inquiry is too important for that."


"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."


"Those who tell the stories rule society."


"Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly."


"Isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is?"


"The perfect state is one where men weep and rejoice over the same things."


"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions."


"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."


"He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god."


"To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.,."


"The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods."


"No knowledge considers or prescribes for the advantage of the stronger, but for that of the weaker, which it rules."


"How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem."


"Democracy passes into despotism."


"All who do evil and dishonorable things do them against their will."


"Wisdom alone is the true and unalloyed coin for which we ought to exchange all things, for this and with this everything is bought and sold Fortitude, temperance, and justice; in a word, true virtue subsists with wisdom."


"The tools that would teach men their own use would be beyond price."


"I prefer nothing, unless it is true."


"If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist?"


"Love is of the beautiful, and therefore has not the beautiful. And the beautiful is the good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love also wants and desires the good."


"All knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom."


"God is the cause only of good."


"By harming a horse, you decrease his excellence. Thus, by harming a person, you decrease their excellence."


"It is by justice, that we can authenticate a man's value or nullity, the absence of justice, is the absence of what makes him man."


"Is there any self-existent fire? and do all those things which we call self-existent exist? or are only those things which we see, or in some way perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothing whatever besides them? And is all that which we call an intelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name?"


"Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains; some in desires, and some in fears; and some are cowards under the same conditions."


"The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams."


"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."


"What kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and who would be pleased to refute anyone who says anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn’t be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else from it."


"Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul."


"Lust is inseparably accompanied with the troubling of all order, with impudence, unseemliness, sloth, and dissoluteness."


"Science is nothing but perception."