1. "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."
2. “...And yet the true creator is necessity, which is the mother of invention.”
3. "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."
4. "As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers."
5. "Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another."
6. “At the touch of Love every one becomes a poet.”
7. “A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”
8. “Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.”
9. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
10. "Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."
11. "But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed."
12. ”Courage is a kind of salvation.”
13. ”Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
14. "Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."
15. "Each of us when separated, having one side only... is but indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half."
16. “Even the gods love jokes.”
17. “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
18. “Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.”
19. “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
20. “Friends have all things in common.”
21. “Geometry existed before the creation.”
22. ”God ever geometrizes.”
23. "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
24. “He did not wish to be believed to be the best but to be it.”
25. ”He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant that the diagonal of a square is incommensurate with its side.”
26. “He was a wise man who invented God.”
27. ”He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.”
28. "He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it."
29. "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. "
30. ”He whom love touches not walks in darkness.”
31. “How can you determine 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.”
32. "I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict."
33. “If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.”
34. “If any man . . . could take the wings of a bird and come to the top, then, like a fish who puts his head out of the water and sees this world, he would see a world beyond; and if the nature of man could sustain the sight, he would acknowledge that this world was the place of the true heaven and the true light and the true earth.”
35. “If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.”
36. “If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”
37. “I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.”
38. “I have good hope that there is something after death.”
39. “I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.”
40. “In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.”
41. "In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful --in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason --and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes."
42. “It is better to be unborn than untaught: for ignorance is the root of misfortune.”
43. "It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other."
44. "I think a man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the
best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life."
45. “Know thyself.”
46. "Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."
47. “Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.”
48. "Life must be lived as play."
49. “Light is the shadow of God.”
50. “Love is a serious mental disease.”
51. "Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods."
52. “Love will make men dare to die for their beloved - love alone; and women as well as men.”
53. "Man is a being in search of meaning."
54. “Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.”
55. “Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.”
56. “Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness and life to everything. Fine music is the essence of order and leads to all that is just and good, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate and eternal form.”
57. “Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
58. “Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
59. “No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”
60. “No human thing is of serious importance.”
61. “No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.”
62. ”No nature except an extraordinary one could ever easily formulate a theory.”
63. ”Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.”
64. “No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.”
65. “Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself.”
66. "Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."
67. “Perfect wisdom has four parts: Wisdom, the principle of doing things aright. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.”
68. “Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.”
69. "Philosophy is the highest music".
70. “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.”
71. "Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand."
72. "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
73. “Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.”
74. "Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul."
75. “Science is nothing but perception.”
76. "Self conquest is the greatest of victories."
77. "So as this only point among the rest remaineth sure and certain, namely, that nothing is certain."
78. “The beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression more readily taken.”
79. “The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.”
80. “The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.”
81. “The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.”
82. “The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.”
83. “The greatest penalty of evildoing - namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.”
84. "The greatest wealth is to live content with little."
85. "The harder you work, the luckier you get."
86. “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”
87. "The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."
88. "The life which is unexamined is not worth living."
89. “The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.”
90. “The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.”
91. "The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so."
92. “...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...”
93. ”Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul towards truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is not unhappily allowed to fall down.”
94. “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.”
95. ”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.”
96. “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
97. “The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.”
98. ”There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.”
99. "There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."
100. "The situation has been entirely reversed since the days when thinkers thought of the stars as without souls. Yet even then they were object of admiration, and the conviction which is now actually held was suspected by those who embarked on exactness: that in no way could the stars as soulless things keep so precisely to marvellous calculations, if they did not possess intelligence. Some even then were bold enough to venture this very proposition and they say that it was reason that had ordained everything in the sky. But these very men were deceived about the nature of the soul, namely that it is older than the bodies; they imagined it as younger and thus so to speak ruined everything, and most of all themselves."
101. ”The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.”
102. "The true lover of learning then must his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth. He whose desires are drawn toward knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasures- -I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one. . .Then how can he who has the magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all times and all existence, think much of human life? He cannot. Or can such a one account death fearful? No indeed".
103. "The wisest have the most authority."
104. “They certainly give very strange names to diseases.”
105. "They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth."
106. “Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.”
107. “This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.”
108. “This I know - that I know nothing.”
109. "This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them."
110. “Those having lamps will pass them on to others.”
111. "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."
112. “Time is the image of eternity.”
113. "Truth is its own reward."
114. “To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.”
115. “We are bound to our bodies like an oyster is to its shell.”
116. ”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.”
117. “What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.”
118. “Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.”
119. “When men speak ill of you, live so as nobody may believe them.”
120. "When the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself."
121. “When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”
122. “We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.”
123. "Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment."
124. "Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information -- never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good -- he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world."
125. "When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them."
126. "When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."
127. “Whether these matters are to be regarded as sport, or as earnest, we must not forget that this pleasure is held to have been granted by nature to male and female when conjoined for the work of procreation; the crime of male with male, or female with female, is an outrage on nature and a capital surrender to lust of pleasure.”
128. “Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.”
129. “Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
130. “You are so 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 judge of the highest matters.”
131. "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
132. “You cannot conceive the many without the one.”
