"For our discussion is on no trifling matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives."
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Plato quotes (page 44 of 48)
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"Wherefore also these Kinds [elements] occupied different places even before the universe was organised and generated out of them. Before that time, in truth, all these were in a state devoid of reason or measure, but when the work of setting in order this Universe was being undertaken, fire and water and earth and air, although possessing some traces of their known nature, were yet disposed as everything is likely to be in the absence of God; and inasmuch as this was then their natural condition, God began by first marking them out into shapes by means of forms and numbers."
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"The true musician is attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre... for he truly has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged in the Dorian mode. Such a one makes me joyous with the sound of his voice, so eager am I in drinking in his words."
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"It is beautiful to wish to add another's light to your own."
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"The deity on purpose [sings] the liveliest of all lyrics through the most miserable poet."
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"The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods."
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"They ought to be gentle to their friends and dangerous to their enemies."
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"So the state founded on natural principles is wise as a whole in virtue of the knowledge inherent in its smallest constituent class, which exercises authority over the rest. And the smallest class is the one which naturally possesses that form of knowledge which alone of all others deserves the title of wisdom."
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"[Not enough is known about solid geometry] and for two reasons: in the first place, no government places value on it; this leads to a lack of energy in the pursuit of it, and it is difficult. In the second place, students cannot learn it unless they have a teacher. But then a teacher can hardly be found."
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"Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell."
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"What essence is to generation, that truth is to belief."
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"He who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one's "uses base" for the sake of money; but this is not honourable."
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"All I would ask you to be thinking of is the truth and not Socrates."
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"So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey."
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"The good are like one another, and friends to one another; and ... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing."
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"All soul is immortal. For that which is always in movement is immortal; that which moves something else, and is moved by something else, in ceasing from movement ceases from living. So only that which moves itself, because it does not abandon itself, never stops moving. But it is also source and first principle of movement for the other things which move."
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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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"Is virtue something that can be taught?"
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"The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good."
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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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