Plato - Republic

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In astronomy, as in geometry, we should employ problems, and let the heavens alone if we would approach the subject in the right way and so make the natural gift of reason to be of any real use.

Plato
Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for its sake.

Plato
SOC: And all arithmetic and calculations have to do with number?
GLAUCON: Yes.
SOC: And they appear to lead the mind towards truth?
GLAUCON: Yes, in a very remarkable manner.

Plato
Can we devise one of those lies—the kind which crop up as the occasion demands, which we were talking about not so long ago—so that with a single noble lie we can indocrinate the rulers themselves, preferably, but at least the rest of the community?

Plato
For a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him.

Plato
The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers.

Plato
We must now examine whether just people also live better and are happier than unjust ones. I think it's clear already that this is so, but we must look into it further, since the argument concerns no ordinary topic, but the way we ought to live.

Plato
Now nothing can be more important than that the work of a soldier should be well done.

Plato
The most skillful physicians are those who, from their youth upwards, have combined with the knowledge of their art the greatest experience of disease; they had better not be robust in health, and should have had all manner of diseases in their own persons.

Plato
Those who reproach injustice do so because they are afraid not of doing it but of suffering it.

Plato
The good are not willing to rule either for the sake of money or of honor.

Plato
We are concerned with that part of geometry which relates to war; for in pitching a camp, or taking up a position, or closing or extending the lines of an army, or any other maneuver, whether in actual battle or on a march, it will make all the difference whether a general is or is not a geometrician.

Plato
I take it that our state, having been founded and built up on the right lines, is good in the complete sense of the word.

Plato
Motion... has many forms, and not one only; two of them are obvious enough even to wits no better than ours; and there are others, as I imagine, which may be left to wiser persons.

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

Plato
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.

Plato
Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument.

Plato
How, then, might we contrive... one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?

Plato
Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored.

Plato
He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

Plato
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness…. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

Plato
For our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives.

Plato
Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest hold upon it

Plato
Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Plato
These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.

Plato
Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?

Plato
Let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible.... For this is the way of happiness.

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

Plato
Is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship?

Plato
Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.

Plato