Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.
...in the running of cities, virtually nothing is done by anyone that is conducive to political health, nor is there a single ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and still remain alive; it would be a case of a solitary human among wild ...
We've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own ... Then, it turns out that this doing one's own work-provided that it comes to be in a certain way-is justice.
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.
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
... when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won't laugh mindlessly, but he'll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it...
Justice is useful when money is useless.
So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funnelled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on ...
The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
Here's something else I'd like your opinion about," I said. "If he went back underground and sat down again in the same spot, wouldn't the sudden transition from the sunlight mean that his eyes would be overwhelmed by darkness?" "Certainly," he repli...
I shall try to persuade first the Rulers and soldiers, and then the rest of the community, that the upbringing and education we have given them was all something that happened to them only in a dream. In reality they were fashioned and reared, and th...
The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.
All the same, we ought to point out that if the kinds of poetry and representation which are designed merely to give pleasure can come up with a rational argument for their inclusion in a well-governed community, we'd be delighted -- short of comprom...
Do you mean that the tyrant will dare to use violence against the people who fathered him, and raise his hand against them if they oppose him? So the tyrant is a parricide, and little comfort to his old parent.
The tools that would teach men their own use would be beyond price.
But I don't think we shall quarrel about a word - the subject of our inquiry is too important for that.
