Plato Quotes
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I don't know anything that gives me greater pleasure, or profit either, than talking or listening to philosophy. But when it comes to ordinary conversation, such as the stuff you talk about financiers and the money market, well, I find it pretty tiresome personally, and I feel sorry that my friends should think they're being very busy when they're really doing absolutely nothing. Of course, I know your idea of me: you think I'm just a poor unfortunate, and I shouldn't wonder if your right. But then I dont THINK that you're unfortunate - I know you are.
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Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.
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The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of God.
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Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.
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For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.
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A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!
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I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse.
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Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
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There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen.
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The only thing worse than suffering an injustice is committing an injustice.
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Those who are not schooled and practised in truth [who are not honest and upright men] can never manage aright the government, nor yet can those who spend their lives as closet philosophers; because the former have no high purpose to guide their actions, while the latter keep aloof from public life.
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... the community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of its laws and constitution, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity, become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined.
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When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
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Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserve.
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Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors.
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Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.
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From a short-sided view, the whole moving contents of the heavens seemed to them a parcel of stones, earth and other soul-less bodies, though they furnish the sources of the world order.
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They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom.
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For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge,--such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.
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Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
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Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state.
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He who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one's "uses base" for the sake of money; but this is not honourable.
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When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
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I take it that our state, having been founded and built up on the right lines, is good in the complete sense of the word.