Plato

Rhythm and harmony enter most powerfully into the inner most part of the soul and lay forcible hands upon it, bearing grace with them, so making graceful him who is rightly trained.

Writing is the geometry of the soul.

Their military training will ensure success in war, but they must maintain unity by not allowing the state to grow to large, and by ensuring that the measures for promotion and demotion from one class to another are carried out. Above all they must maintain the educational system unchanged; for on education everything else depends, and it is an illusion to imagine that mere legislation without it can effect anything of consequence.

... Societies aren t made of sticks and stones, but of men whose individual characters, by turning the scale one way or another, determine the direction of the whole.

Love is the pursuit of the whole.

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.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

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.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

Those who tell the stories rule society.

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

Aspiring minds must sometimes sustain loss.

A written discourse on any subject is bound to contain much that is fanciful.

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter consciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

. . . the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was every granted by the gods to man.

Love is a severe mental disorder.

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.