The people always have 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.

The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage.

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.

Until philosophers hold power, neither states nor individuals will have rest from trouble.

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.

Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.