The Republic Quotes by Plato(page 5 of 20) (2024)

“the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist?”
― Plato, The Republic

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“if the just man is good at keeping money, he is good at stealing it.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“The story is, that Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing them open, he ran up to the dead bodies, saying, Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“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 unmistakeable.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“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.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“On the other hand, I can't not defend her, since I can't help feeling it is wrong to stand idly by when I hear justice coming under attack, and not come to her defence for as long as I have breath in my body and a tongue in my head. So the best thing is to make what defence I can.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“What folly, Socrates, has taken possession of you all? And why, sillybillies, do you knock under to one another? I say that if you want really to know what justice is, you should not only ask but answer, and you should not seek honour to yourself from the refutation of an opponent, but have your own answer; for there is many a one who can ask and cannot answer. And now I will not have you say that justice is duty or advantage or profit or gain or interest, for this sort of nonsense will not do for me; I must have clearness and accuracy. I”
― Plato, The Republic

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“But I speak in this vehement manner, as I must frankly confess to you, because I want to hear from you the opposite side; and I would ask you to show not only the superiority which justice has over injustice, but what effect they have on the possessor of them which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil to him.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“The tools that would teach men their own use would be beyond price.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“What is honored in a culture gets cultivated there.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“I grow impatient at the length of your exordium.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways—by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul. When he sees it troubled and unable to discern anything clearly, instead of laughing thoughtlessly, he will ask whether, coming from a brighter existence, its unaccustomed vision is obscured by the darkness, in which case he will think its condition enviable and its life a happy one; or whether, emerging from the depths of ignorance, it is dazzled by excess of light.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“Behold, he said, the wisdom of Socrates; he refuses to teach himself, and goes about learning of others, to whom he never even says Thank you.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“But whether the just have a better and happier life than the unjust is a further question which we also proposed to consider.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“...in the running of cities, virtually nothing is done by anyone that is conducive to political health, nor is there a single ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and still remain alive; it would be a case of a solitary human among wild animals, neither wanting to join in their depredations nor able to stand alone against their collective savagery, dead before he'd done any good to his city or friends and useless both to himself and everybody else. Once a person has made all these calculations, he keeps his peace and minds his own business, like someone withdrawing from the prevailing wind into the shelter of a wall in a storm of dust or rain, and as he sees everyone else filling themselves full of lawlessness he is content if he himself can somehow live out life here untainted by injustice and impious actions, and leave it with fine hopes and in a spirit of kindness and good will.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“[W]hen 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…”
― Plato, The Republic

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“when a man comes near to the realization that he will be making an end, fear and care enter him for things to which he gave no thought before. The tales17 told about what is in Hades—that the one who has done unjust deeds18 here must pay the penalty there—at which he laughed up to then, now make his soul twist and turn because he fears they might be true.”
― Plato, The Republic of Plato

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“Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil: many who are not good seem to be so, and conversely? That”
― Plato, The Republic

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“There you have Socrates’ wisdom; [b] he himself isn’t willing to teach, but he goes around learning from others and isn’t even grateful to them.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning the gods, to which our poets and reciters will be expected to conform --that God is not the author of all things, but of good only.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“For it is not because they fear doing unjust deeds, but because they fear suffering them, that those who blame injustice do so.”
― Plato, The Republic of Plato

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“You know also 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. Quite true. And 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. Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones only.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“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.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“There seem to be two causes of the deterioration of the arts. What are they? Wealth, I said, and poverty. How do they act? The process is as follows: When a potter becomes rich, will he, think you, any longer take the same pains with his art? Certainly not. He will grow more and more indolent and careless? Very true. And the result will be that he becomes a worse potter? Yes; he greatly deteriorates.”
― Plato, The Republic

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“A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists. Wherein”
― Plato, The Republic

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“Or isn’t virtue in tension with wealth, as though each were lying in the scale of a balance, always inclining in opposite directions?”
― Plato, The Republic of Plato

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