The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things.

I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them.

People regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust, - about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them.

The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers.

And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life. Not because the law of the state requires him. Nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him. Nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.