Their military training will ensure success in war, but they must maintain unity by not allowing the state to grow to large, and by ensuring that the measures for promotion and demotion from one class to another are carried out. Above all they must maintain the educational system unchanged; for on education everything else depends, and it is an illusion to imagine that mere legislation without it can effect anything of consequence.

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

Ignorance is the root cause of all difficulties.

Don't ask a poet to explain himself. He cannot.

The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.

It is correct to make a priority of young people, taking care that they turn out as well as possible.