Republic (Plato)

But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

— Republic (Plato)

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

— Republic (Plato)

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

— Republic (Plato)

Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only.

— Republic (Plato)

God is not the author of all things, but of good only.

— Republic (Plato)

The gods are not magicians who transform themselves; neither do they deceive mankind in any way.

— Republic (Plato)

Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

— Republic (Plato)

And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meant for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

— Republic (Plato)

A fit of laughter, which has been indulged to excess, almost always produces a violent reaction.

— Republic (Plato)

Truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.

— Republic (Plato)

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 a euphemism for folly.

— Republic (Plato)

Attention to health is a great obstacle to the practice of virtue and improvement in [life].

— Republic (Plato)

When the citizens of a society can see and hear their leaders, then that society should be seen as one.

— Republic (Plato)

The judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.

— Republic (Plato)

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

— Republic (Plato)

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

— Republic (Plato)

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.

— Republic (Plato)

Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.

— Republic (Plato)

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.

— Republic (Plato)

Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

— Republic (Plato)

The Good therefore may be said to be the source not only of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, but also of their existence and reality; yet it is not itself identical with reality, but is beyond reality, and superior to it in dignity and power.

— Republic (Plato)

The knowledge at which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal.

— Republic (Plato)

The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch.

— Republic (Plato)

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

— Republic (Plato)

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

— Republic (Plato)

When our pauper was rich, did he perform any of the useful social functions we've just mentioned simply by spending his money? Though he may have appeared to belong to the ruling class, surely in fact he was neither ruling, nor serving society in any other way; he was merely a consumer of goods. ... Don't you think we can fairly call him a drone? He grows up in his own home to be a plague to the community, just as a drone grows in its cell to be a plague to the hive.

— Republic (Plato)

Democracy passes into despotism.

— Republic (Plato)

The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. ...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

— Republic (Plato)

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

— Republic (Plato)

No human thing is of serious importance.

— Republic (Plato)

Virtue owns no master: he who honors her shall have more of her, and he who slights her, less. The responsibility lies with the chooser. Heaven is guiltless.

— Republic (Plato)

Wherefore my counsel is that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the gods.

— Republic (Plato)