There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.
Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
Man - a being in search of meaning.
No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
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.
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
One man cannot practice many arts with success.
As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.
A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.
Love is a serious mental disease.
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.
To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
The good is the beautiful.