Plato

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

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?

Democracy passes into despotism.

If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

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

If a man be endowed with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.

Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

Interference by the three classes with each other s jobs, and interchange of jobs between them, therefore, does the greatest harm to our state, and we are entirely justified in calling it the worst of evils.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

And once we have given our community a good start,' I pointed out, ' the process will be cumulative. By maintaining a sound system of education you produce citizens of good character, and citizens of sound character, with the advantage of a good education, produce in turn children better than themselves and better able to produce still better children in their turn, as can be seen with animals.

Of all the Gods, Love is the best friend of humankind, the helper and healer of all ills that stand in the way of human happiness.

And when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment.

No evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death.

Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence.