How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
Wealth ... and poverty: the one is the parent of luxury and indolence and the other of meanness and vicious-ness and both of discontent.
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world bel...
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident they came by work.
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misf...
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 him is to become holy, just, and wise.
…if a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.
There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.
The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophe...
According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend...
Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.
Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.
That's what education should be, I said, the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in...
Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.
In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness a...