The truth is that we isolate a particular kind of love and appropriate it for the name of love, which really belongs to a wider whole..

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind..

The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enoug….

Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void….

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….

In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, How do you feel about love, Sophocles? are you still capable of it….

Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realitie….

Ignorance: the root of all evil..

When two friends are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that w….

We must now examine whether just people also live better and are happier than unjust ones. I think it's clear already that this is so, but we must lo….

Better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of all misfortune..

Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education..

For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merel….

Do not expect justice where might is right..

May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ..

A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citize….

We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing..

[Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato.... He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato….

But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I,….

Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole..

The love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men….