To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.
— Plato
There is no such thing as a lovers' oath.
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
Life must be lived as play.
Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.
Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.
Necessity... the mother of invention.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
The wisest have the most authority.
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
Love is a serious mental disease.
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.
Philosophy is the highest music.
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
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.
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
