Quotes from The Republic

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“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.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“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.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers 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.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά

Nothing beautiful without struggle.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“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.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“That's what education should be," I said, "the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken....Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?

We cannot....Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts....”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Those who don't know must learn from those who do.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“... when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won't laugh mindlessly, but he'll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brillance.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Reading Plato should be easy; understanding Plato can be difficult.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Here's something else I'd like your opinion about," I said. "If he went back underground and sat down again in the same spot, wouldn't the sudden transition from the sunlight mean that his eyes would be overwhelmed by darkness?"

"Certainly," he replied.

"Now, the process of adjustment would be quite long this time, and suppose that before his eyes had settled down and while he wasn't seeing well, he had once again to compete against those same old prisoners at identifying those shadows. Would he make a fool of himself? Wouldn't they say that he'd come back from his upward journey with his eyes ruined, and that it wasn't even worth trying to go up there? And would they -- if they could -- grab hold of anyone who tried to set them free and take them up there and kill him?”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“And then, at this stage, every dictator comes up with the notorious and typical demand: he asks the people for bodyguards to protect him, the people's champion.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“What shall we say about those spectators, then, who can see a plurality of beautiful things, but not beauty itself, and who are incapable of following if someone else tries to lead them to it, and who can see many moral actions, but not morality itself, and so on? That they only ever entertain beliefs, and do not know any of the things they believe?”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

“It's not at all uncommon to find a person's desires compelling him to go against his reason, and to see him cursing himself and venting his passion on the source of the compulsion within him. It's as if there were two warring factions, with passion fighting on the side of reason. But I'm sure you won't claim that you had ever, in yourself or in anyone else, met a case of passion siding with his desires against the rational mind, when the rational mind prohibits resistance.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic

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“It’s alright,” they say, “Of course, there’s beauty there,” but they hold back; you know they have seen or heard of the ugliness and the insularity there. They have experienced the farawayness of it. I have learned to keep silent, not to berate them for their disregard of the Brits’ role in the colonial tragedy of my country.”
― Christos Tsiolkas, quote from Barracuda

“She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out … Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, quote from The Nest

“Goed dat er nog íémand is die weet hoe hij een koninklijk bevel moet opvolgen! - Nefertiti”
― James Rollins, quote from Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx

“Just go look.

That sentiment had been the driving force behind humanity's progress across the ages, a simple imperative fueled by our innate curiosity: to discover what was around the next bend, over the next horizon. It was that same inquisitiveness that impelled us to explore who we are, where we came from, and where we are headed next.”
― James Rollins, quote from The Bone Labyrinth

“At last evil and corruption take over,” Mearth laughed icily, her eyes filled with a wild glow. “Someday you’ll become so unstable that you’ll kill anyone you’ve ever cared about in your life, and when that happens I only hope that you leave any outsider witnesses alone as you fade out of the world.” Alecto froze for a moment, completely silent, setting the camera down on the fence and thinking things over. Mandy could see him clearly now that he was on the video, but he looked obscure. “What’s on your corrupted mind, pretty little Sydney Tar Ponds?” Mearth asked, dropping the wire cutters and stepping closer to him.

“I hate you,” he answered icily.

“Oh, no you don’t, you just think you hate me,” Mearth insisted, her voice kind, caring, almost loving. “You didn’t mean to try and kill me, you’ve been worn-out by life, you’ve been alive a very long time, your mind is a storm and your usual insight is gone.” Mandy was inclined to agree with Mearth; he looked like a storm, his eyes had dark shadows under them, he was limping when he walked, he was shivering and coughing and his head was leaning to one side slightly. Nonetheless, he still seemed to be able to reason, because when he noticed Mearth’s falsely cheerful words he glared at her hatefully, smoke trailing from his cigarette. “I’m going to tell Cheryl what you’ve done, all those times you tried to kill me, I’ll tell her and she’ll know what you did,” he threatened.

“No Sydney Tar Ponds, you won’t,” Mearth replied softly, “because if you tell her, I’ll kill her and you’ll have a few more super 8 home videos to add to the collection of celluloid memories.”

“…You wouldn’t,” Alecto exclaimed.

“If you really do love her, if you really care about her and she’s your friend, you’ll stay silent,” Mearth told him. “You think what I’m doing is cruel, sadistic, but it isn’t… you aren’t even a real person, you don’t understand.”

Alecto said nothing back to her.

The television screen faded to black and Mandy just sat there in the darkness, her expression blank.”
― Rebecca McNutt, quote from Smog City

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