I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.

Amicus Plato — amicus Aristoteles — magis amica veritas. (Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.)

For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet

Justice is useful when money is useless.

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

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

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

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 with the comfort...

virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.

a life without investigation is not worth living

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

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

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

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

Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?

… when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won’t laugh mindlessly, but he’ll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled...

…A MAN WHO HAS GIVEN HIS HEART TO LEARNING AND TRUE WISDOM AND EXERCISED THAT PART OF HIMSELF IS SURELY BOUND, IF HE ATTAINS TO TRUTH, TO HAVE IMMORTAL AND DIVINE THOUGHTS, AND CANNOT FAIL TO ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY AS FULL AS IS PERMITTED TO HUMAN NATURE; AND BECAUSE HE HAS ALWAYS LOOKED AFTER THE DIVINE...

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.

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one’s own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with...

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

Ideas are the source of all things

And whenever any one 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...

Knowledge unqualified is knowledge simply of something learned.

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

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 touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the...

Si vis pacem, para bellum

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

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imaginationand life to everything.

… 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; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not...

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

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

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

If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful,...

[“F]or it’s not possible,” [Socrates] said, “for anybody to experience a greater evil than hating arguments. Hatred of arguments and hatred of human beings come about in the same way. For hatred of human beings arises from artlessly trusting somebody to excess, and believing that human being to be in every way true and sound...

[W]hen men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them...

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Philosophy is the highest music.

How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

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...

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.

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 the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And...

No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.

We’ve heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’t one’s own … Then, it turns out that this doing one’s own work-provided that it comes to be in a certain way-is justice.

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...

I am smart because I know I nothing.

but you might succeed with the second, and later generations.

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

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.

He was a wise man who invented God.