"Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle."

"Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may he a fortress to me all my days? For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself."

"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life."

"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."

"Courage is knowing what not to fear."

"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."

"All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue."

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little."

"A boy is of all wild beasts the most difficult to manage."

"You take the words in the sense which is most damaging to the argument."

"I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning."

"Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year for it is wrong to add fire to fire."

"There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric....But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman."

"We do not learn and what we call learning is only a process of recollection."

"Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns."

"No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return."

"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."

"If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things."

"Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly."

"The perfect state is one where men weep and rejoice over the same things."

"O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him."

"We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue."

"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."

"Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."

"There is truth in wine and children."

"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."

"Writing is the geometry of the soul."

"Excellent things are rare."

"Courage is a kind of salvation."

"Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value."

"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."

"Each citizen should play his part in the community according to his individual gifts."

"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."

"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."

"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."

"Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man."

"....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)"

"There is no such thing as a lovers' oath."

"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."

"Of all animals the boy is the most unmanageable."

"There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it?"

"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments."

"The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles."

"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?"

"No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory."

"I shall assume that your silence gives consent."

"Love is a serious mental disease."

"Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul."

"But I don't think we shall quarrel about a word - the subject of our inquiry is too important for that."

"No man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city. A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time."