"No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise."

"The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself."

"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."

"You should not honor men more than truth."

"A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers."

"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."

"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."

"Nothing could be more important than that the work of a soldier is well done. No tools will make a man a skilled workmen, or master of defense, or be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them and has never bestowed any attention on them."

"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."

"All is flux, nothing stays still."

"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."

"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."

"Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several he will fail to achieve distinction in any."

"The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs."

"The measure of a man is what he does with power."

"They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases."

"Those who don't know must learn from those who do."

"For many generations, they obeyed the laws and loved the divine to which they were akin they reckoned that qualities of character were far more important than their present prosperity. So they bore the burden of their wealth and possessions lightly, and did not let their high standard of living intoxicate them or make them lose their self-control. But when the divine element in them became weakened and their human traits became predominant, they ceased to be able to carry their prosperity with moderation."

"Attention to health is life greatest hindrance."

"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."

"Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens."

"The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines."

"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."

"The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself."

"Man - a being in search of meaning."

"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."

"Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy."

"States are as the men, they grow out of human characters."

"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty."

"Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service."

"For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."

"I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict."

"For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories."

"Let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly."

"Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand."

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

"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."

"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."

"Men of Athens, I honor and I love you, but I will obey the god rather than you and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet."

"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."

"Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good."

"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."

"Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality."

"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."

"Virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue."

"They certainly give very strange names to diseases."

"The State is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the State and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me."

"On the virtuous man "He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself."

"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."

"Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences."