Plato Quotes
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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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Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him.
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If a man be endowed with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.
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He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.
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The wisest have the most authority.
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The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
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Because, unlike courage and wisdom, which made our state brave and wise by being present in a particular part of it, discipline operates by being diffused throughout the whole of it. It produces a concord between its strongest and weakest and middle elements, whether you define them by the standard of good sense, or of strength, or of numbers or money or the like. And so we are quite justified in regarding discipline as this sort of natural harmony and agreement between higher and lower about which of them is to rule in state and individual.
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Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors.
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No soul willfully does wrong.
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Discordance is evil. Harmony is virtue.
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Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.
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Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
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Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not.
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When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
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From all wild beasts, a child is the most difficult to handle.
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Much sleep is not required by nature, either for our souls or bodies, or for the action in which they are concerned.
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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 help of art - he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.
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The beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.
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A fit of laughter, which has been indulged to excess, almost always produces a violent reaction.
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And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
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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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At the Egyptian city of Naucratis there was a famous old god whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis was sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters.
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The race of the guardians must be kept pure.
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If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection.