"Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting."

"Those who don't know must learn from those who do."

"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."

"He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it."

"Evil is more opposed to the good than to the no-good."

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

"I am smart because I know I nothing."

"Harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees."

"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?"

"No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes."

"If a man perfectly righteous should come upon earth, he would find so much opposition that he would be imprisoned, reviled, scourged, and in fine crucified by such, who, though they were extremely wicked, would yet pass for righteous men."

"As there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world."

"If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist?"

"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."

"The State which we have founded must possess the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, discipline and justice ... Justice is the principle which has in fact been followed throughout, the principle of one man one job, of minding ones own business, in the sense of doing the job for which one is naturally fitted and not interfering with other people."

"Human behavior flows from three main sources desire, emotion, and knowledge."

"Man is a being in search of meaning."

"When the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge? Is not that the inference?"

"No knowledge considers or prescribes for the advantage of the stronger, but for that of the weaker, which it rules."

"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."