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.
You’re my Star, a stargazer too,and I wish that I were Heaven,with a billion eyes to look at you!
Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill… we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by…[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society.
How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.
For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.
Only a philosopher’s mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.
let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.
Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.
….I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best.(tr Jowett)
Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].
I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.
Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.
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.
For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.
A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.
Those who don’t know must learn from those who do.
Then we shan’t regard anyone as a lover of knowledge or wisdom who is fussy about what he studies…
Knowledge unqualified is knowledge simply of something learned.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance
The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man’s education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child’s natural bent.
For, let me tell you that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me are the pleasure and charm of conversation.
You take the words in the sense which is most damaging to the argument.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws
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 wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.
The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)
…[T]he right way is to give one’s attention first to the highest good of the young, just as you expect a good gardener to give his attention first to the young plants, and after that to the others. – Socrates
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?
All good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates in the soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes.
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself
I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning
….harmony that would fittingly imitate the utterances and accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed […] confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes
Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.
Physical excellence does not of itself produce a good mind and character: on the other hand, excellence of mind and character will make the best of the physique it is given.
The reason is that they utter these words of theirs not by virtue of a skill, but by a divine power – otherwise, if they knew how to speak well on one topic thanks to a skill, they would know how to speak about every other topic too.
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
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.
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
But I don’t think we shall quarrel about a word – the subject of our inquiry is too important for that.
Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.
The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
Be kind, because everyone is having a really hard time.
And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.
Haven’t you noticed that opinion without knowledge is always a poor thing? At the best it is blind—isn’t anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding like a blind man on the right road?
He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act
What is honored in a culture gets cultivated there.
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.
There can be no fairer spectacle than that of a man, who combines the possession of moral beauty in his soul with outward beauty of form, corresponding and harmonizing with the former, because the same great pattern enters both.
As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.
The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.
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.
He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age. But to him who is of an opposite disposition, youth and age are equally a burden.
Then we got into a labyrinth, and, when we thought we were at the end,came out again at the beginning, having still to see as much as ever.
Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are free from the grasp, not of one mad master only, but of many.
I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true.
The author’s Socrates admonishes paramount awareness human limitations. If we do good to those we evaluate as good and evil to those we evaluate at the evil, and we are wrong, we have been made the world less just.
No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.
The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his sneses, and the mind is no longer in him.
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
The tools that would teach men their own use would be beyond price.
If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.
Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors.
Rather I think that a man who … is willing … to value learning as long as he lives, not supposing that old age brings him wisdom of itself, will necessarily pay more attention to the rest of his life.
Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.
It’s like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn’t make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.
virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.
this is the greatest good to man, to discourse daily on virtue, and other things which you have heard me discussing, examining both myself and others,
The perfect state is one where men weep and rejoice over the same things.
for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.
[On the virtuous man] “He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself.
It is only just that anything that grows up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes no one.
the matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice …
Caring about the happiness of others, we find our own.
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines.
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
We are bound to our bodies like an oyster to its shell.
A boy is of all wild beasts the most difficult to manage.
Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several he will fail to achieve distinction in any.
Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year for it is wrong to add fire to fire.
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself and not upon other men has adopted the very best plan for living happily.
Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
There are three classes of men-lovers of wisdom lovers of honour lovers of gain.
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire emotion and knowledge.
Wealth … and poverty: the one is the parent of luxury and indolence and the other of meanness and vicious-ness and both of discontent.
The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
Each citizen should play his part in the community according to his individual gifts.
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself and not upon other men has adopted the very best plan for living happily.
States are as the men are they grow out of human characters.
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest.
Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.
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.
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
Wise men speak because they have something to say Fools because they have to say something.
For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
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.
He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
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.
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.
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
We do not learn and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
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.
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.
They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.
The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.
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.
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.
Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.