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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.
Plato -
We must now examine whether just people also live better and are happier than unjust ones. I think it's clear already that this is so, but we must look into it further, since the argument concerns no ordinary topic, but the way we ought to live.
Plato
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Beauty is a natural superiority.
Plato -
No town can live peacefully whatever its laws when its citizens do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love.
Plato -
As there are misanthropists or haters of men, so also are there misologists, or haters of ideas.
Plato -
We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
Plato -
Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.
Plato -
Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.
Plato
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The greater part of instruction is being reminded of things you already know.
Plato -
For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.
Plato -
... what we can be positive about is what we have just said, namely that they must be given the right education, whatever that may be, as the surest way to make them behave humanely to each other and the subjects in their charge.
Plato -
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
Plato -
The man who hath music in his soul will be most in love with the loveliest.
Plato -
For our discussion is on no trifling matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives.
Plato
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Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom.
Plato -
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
Plato -
In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.
Plato -
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
Plato -
I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.
Plato -
Conversion is not implanting eyes, for they exist already; but giving them a right direction, which they have not.
Plato
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Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.
Plato -
States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers.
Plato -
Most people affirm pleasure to be the good, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge.
Plato -
As you hope to prove your own great value to the state, and having proved it, to attain at once to absolute power, so do I indulge a hope that I shall be the supreme power over you, if I am able to prove my own great value to you.
Plato