"Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself."

"... 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."

"The tools that would teach men their own use would be beyond price."

"Democracy passes into despotism."

"Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?"

"Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike."

"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."

"I am smart because I know I nothing."

"Wealth ... and poverty: the one is the parent of luxury and indolence and the other of meanness and vicious-ness and both of discontent."

"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery."

"Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil."

"So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funnelled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on his energy and initiative of mind, if he has any, is to soften it as iron is softened in a furnace, and made workable instead of hard and unworkable: but if he persists and does not break the enchantment, the next stage is that it melts and runs, till the spirit has quite run out of him and his mental sinews (if I may so put it) are cut, and he has become what Homer calls "a feeble fighter"."

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

"Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods."

"Education is teaching our children to desire the right things."

"The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile."

"All learning has an emotional base."

"Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment."

"The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery."

"Knowledge unqualified is knowledge simply of something learned."

"All began to change in the reverse direction and grow more tender. The white hair of the elderly began to grow black; the cheeks of the bearded to grow smooth, and one and all to return to the season of bloom that they had left behind them. Young men's bodies grew smoother and smaller day by day and night by night till they reverted alike in mind and body to the likes of a newborn infant, and then dwindled right away and were clean lost to sight."

"When men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;-it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil."

"The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."

"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."

"Then as for those who gaze upon many beautiful things but don't see the beautiful itself, and aren't even capable of following someone else who leads them to it, and upon many just things but not the just itself, and all the things like that, we'll claim that they accept the seeming of everything but discern nothing of what they have opinions about."

"When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income."

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."

"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."

"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."

"And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul."

"Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly."

"And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route."

"Necessity who is the mother of our invention."

"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history."

"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

"The beginning is the most important part of the work."

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

"We are twice armed if we fight with faith."

"Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?"

"Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do."

"Philosophy begins in wonder."

"Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety."

"The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams."

"How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?"

"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."

"Self-conquest is the greatest of victories."

"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."

"To be is to do."

"The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty, the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not because it is a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity."