The god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it's almost impossible to stamp out.
— Plato
The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.
Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.
Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.
The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.
There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.
Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.
To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
There is no harm in repeating a good thing.
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.
Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.
A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.
The good is the beautiful.
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.
Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.
The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.
Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
I would fain grow old learning many things.
Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.
We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.
The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.
We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.
Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.
Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.
Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.
Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.
One man cannot practice many arts with success.
It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn.
Philosophy begins in wonder.
He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
