... the community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of its laws and constitution, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity, become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined.

The truth is that we isolate a particular kind of love and appropriate it for the name of love, which really belongs to a wider whole.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality.

The true musician is attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre... for he truly has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged in the Dorian mode. Such a one makes me joyous with the sound of his voice, so eager am I in drinking in his words.

It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke.