"Because people want more and more possessions, they start wanting more money, and thus honor money more and excellence less. Accordingly, the wealthy become more honored, and the people of excellence less honored. With the majority now money-loving businessmen instead of lovers of victory and honor, the admirable rich men will be put into office, and the poor will be dishonored."

"If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonor, and emulating one another in honor; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?"

"Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality."

"When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them."

"Have you not perceived that imitations, whether of bodily gestures, tones of voice, or modes of thought, if they be persevered in from an early age, are apt to grow into habits and a second nature?"

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

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another."

"To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils."

"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, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.,."

"Those who tell the stories rule society."

"Good actions can strengthen ourselves and inspire good actions to others."

"This alone is to be feared: the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of spirit.,."

"What shall we say about those spectators, then, who can see a plurality of beautiful things, but not beauty itself, and who are incapable of following if someone else tries to lead them to it, and who can see many moral actions, but not morality itself, and so on? That they only ever entertain beliefs, and do not know any of the things they believe?"

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

"If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life."

"I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true."

"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."

"Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise."

"Is there a perfect world?"

"Nothing could be more important than that the work of a soldier is well done."