Plato - Republic

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In every man there is an eye of the soul, which...is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen.

Plato
Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Plato
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

Plato
There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, a third which imitates them.

Plato
Behold! human beings living in a underground den…Like ourselves…they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.

Plato
For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.

Plato
Let there be one man who has a city obedient to his will, and he might bring into existence the ideal polity about which the world is so incredulous.

Plato
The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Plato
Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information - never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good - he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world.

Plato
What is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a woman's life, and thirty in a man's?

Plato
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Plato
Solon was under a delusion when he said that a man when he grows old may learn many things — for he can no more learn much than he can run much; youth is the time for any extraordinary toil.

Plato
And so with the objects of knowledge: these derive from the Good not only their power of being known, but their very being and reality; and Goodness is not the same thing as being, but even beyond being, surpassing it in dignity and power.

Plato
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.

Plato
A fit of laughter, which has been indulged to excess, almost always produces a violent reaction.

Plato
That a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.

Plato
The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.

Plato
The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.

Plato
The greatest price of refusing to participate in politics is being governed by your inferiors.

Plato
In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, How do you feel about love, Sophocles? are you still capable of it? to which he replied, Hush! if you please: to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master. I thought then, as I do now, that he spoke wisely. For unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions.

Plato
They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.

Plato
The city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office must needs be the best governed and freest from strife.

Plato
Oligarchy: A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.

Plato
But if we are guided by me we shall believe that the soul is immortal and capable of enduring all extremes of good and evil, and so we shall hold ever to the upward way and pursue righteousness with wisdom always and ever, that we may be dear to ourselves and to the gods both during our sojourn here and when we receive our reward.

Plato
The judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.

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

Plato
No physician, insofar as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere moneymaker.

Plato
A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot.

Plato