Plato

Avoid compulsion and let early education be a matter of amusement. Young children learn by games; compulsory education cannot remain in the soul.

We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

The good man is the only excellent musician, because he gives forth a perfect harmony not with a lyre or other instrument but with the whole of his life.

The good, of course, is always beautiful, and the beautiful never lacks proportion.

Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year.

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.

The tyranny imposed on the soul by anger, or fear, or lust, or pain, or envy, or desire, I generally call 'injustice.'

Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?

From all wild beasts, a child is the most difficult to handle.

Don't quarrel with your parents even if you are on the right.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

So the nature required to make a really noble Guardian of our commonwealth will be swift and strong, spirited, and philosophic.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things.

And we have made of ourselves living cesspools, and driven doctors to invent names for our diseases.

All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

True friendship can exist only between equals.

Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.

Ideas are the source of all things

Someday, in the distant future, our grand-children' s grand-children will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge.