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

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...

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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....

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...

It’s like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn’t make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can...

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...

Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly...

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of...

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funnelled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his...

Here’s something else I’d like your opinion about,” I said. “If he went back underground and sat down again in the same spot, wouldn’t the sudden transition from the sunlight mean that his eyes would...

Love is a serious mental disease.

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.

There can be no fairer spectacle than that of a man, who combines the possession of moral beauty in his soul with outward beauty of form, corresponding and harmonizing with the former, because the same...

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

He who is a useful keeper of anything is also a better thief.

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill… we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the...

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the...

… as a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his...

Orang bijak berbicara karena ada sesuatu yang HARUS dikatakan, sedangkan orang bodoh berbicara karena INGIN mengatakan sesuatu.

Nothing could be more important than that the work of a soldier is well done. No tools will make a man a skilled workmen, or master of defense, or be of any use to him...

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

…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...

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

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.

Then we got into a labyrinth, and, when we thought we were at the end,came out again at the beginning, having still to see as much as ever.

…and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of...

Those who don’t know must learn from those who do.

[…]make sure you raise your children by having them play in their studies, and don’t use force.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity – I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only...

He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act

In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by…[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of...