What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose..

They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom..

So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well..

The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful..

Shall we not, then, lay down a law, in the first place, that boys shall abstain altogether from wine till their eighteenth year, thereby teaching tha….

Whence comes war and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lust of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money h….

Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another..

No town can live peacefully whatever its laws when its citizens do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love.

The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them..

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other then to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know..

The people always have some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. ... This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs;….

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….

Not by force shall the children learn, but through play.

In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and maste….

The most important part of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence….

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way..

If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness….

Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest hold ….

Let early education be a sort of amusement. You will then be better able to find out the natural bent..

These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing w….

Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger..