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| Plato
A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men. All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else. And what is good, Phaedrus? and what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things? Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another. 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. Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. Attention to health is life greatest hindrance. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Courage is a kind of salvation. Courage is knowing what not to fear. Courage is knowing what to fear.Democracy ... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. Democracy passes into despotism. Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty. Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments. Fools speak because they have to say something.Geniuses speak because they have something to say. For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions. From a short-sided view, the whole moving contents of the heavens seemed to them a parcel of stones, earth and other soul-less bodies, though they furnish the sources of the world order. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. He was a wise man who invented beer. He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. He who love touches walks not in darkness. He whom love touches not walks in darkness. Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty. 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? I am the wisest man in athens because I know I don't know. I am only singularly ignorant. The rest of the citizens are twice ignorant. They think they know, but they still don't know. I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict. I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. 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 misfortune. It is right to give every man his due. Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom. Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence. Life must be lived as play. Love is a serious mental disease. Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods. Man - a being in search of meaning.Man – a being in search of meaning. Moderation, which consists in an indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance. Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue. Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death? No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding. No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory. Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods, ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction. Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half. Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety. Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold and have escaped, not from one master, but from many. One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. Only the dead have seen the end of the war. Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul. States are as the men, they grow out of human characters. Strange times are those in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehoods school. and the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and a fool. That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman. The beginning is the most important part of the work. The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort. The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction. The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile. The greatest wealth is to live content with little. The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant. The life that is unexamined is not worth living. The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom. The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery. The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so. The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions. The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men. The wisest have the most authority. Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded. There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them. There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain. There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. There is no such thing as a lover's oath. There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good. These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not. They certainly give very strange names to diseases. They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases. Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are. Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way. To use words and phrases in an easygoing manner without scrutinizing them too curiously is not in general a mark of ill-breeding. On the contrary, there is something low-bred in being too precise. But sometimes there is no help for it. Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers. We are twice armed if we fight with faith. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. 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. Wealth is well known to be a great comforter. Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment. When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself. When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences. Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher; and philosophy begins in wonder. Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this. You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. |
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