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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.
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Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong … And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.
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The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
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We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
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The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.
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The wolf cares not, how many the sheep be.
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You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action - that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one.
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According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.
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He who is learning and learning and doesn't apply what he knows is like the one who is plowing and plowing and doesn't seed.
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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
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I would fain grow old learning many things.
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The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality.
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When the music changes, the walls of the city shake.
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Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.
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And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors.
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Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift.
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The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death.
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One man cannot practice many arts with success.
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Ideas are the source of all things.
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It is correct to make a priority of young people, taking care that they turn out as well as possible.
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It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn.
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More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.
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Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.
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A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality.