If you harm a horse do you make him better or worse?””Worse.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric….But he, who, not being inspired and having no...

… there is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment;...

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.

I am smart because I know I nothing.

Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.

That’s what education should be,” I said, “the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn’t be the art of implanting sight in the organ,...

Plato was the first to envisage the idea of timeless existence and to emphasize it—against reason—as a reality, more [real] than our actual experience…

The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his sneses, and the mind is no longer in...

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...

Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

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

But 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...

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...

All the same, we ought to point out that if the kinds of poetry and representation which are designed merely to give pleasure can come up with a rational argument for their inclusion in a...

Do you mean that the tyrant will dare to use violence against the people who fathered him, and raise his hand against them if they oppose him? So the tyrant is a parricide, and little...

Be kind, because everyone is having a really hard time.

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 …

Ideas are the source of all things

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.

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

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

[On the virtuous man] “He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.

good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws

Physical excellence does not of itself produce a good mind and character: on the other hand, excellence of mind and character will make the best of the physique it is given.

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

One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

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?

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...

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...

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

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

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

Ich kenne keinen sicheren Weg zum Erfolg, nur einen zum sicheren Misserfolg-es jedem recht machen zu wollen.

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

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

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,...

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.

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

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek....

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

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

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

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

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...