Music imitates (represents) the passions or states of the soul, such as gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites.

Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action.

The misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god.

In educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain

Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.I mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not to take place--though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place.

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

A king ruleth as he ought, a tyrant as he lists, a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.