"Science is nothing but perception."

"Philosophy is the highest music."

"There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."

"No tools will make a man a skilled workmen, or master of defense, or be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them and has never bestowed any attention on them."

"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 have good hope that there is something after death."

"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."

"Philosophy is the highest music."

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

"No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong. Only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again."

"Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god."

"There's no chance of their having a conscious glimpse of the truth as long as they refuse to disturb the things they take for granted and remain incapable of explaining them. For if your starting point is unknown, and your end-point and intermediate stages are woven together out of unknown material, there may be coherence, but knowledge is completely out of the question."

"Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or better than cohesion and unity?"

"The only real ill-doing is the deprivation of knowledge."

"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder."

"A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand."

"Evil is more opposed to the good than to the no-good."

"We are twice armed if we fight with faith."

"Is there any self-existent fire? and do all those things which we call self-existent exist? or are only those things which we see, or in some way perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothing whatever besides them? And is all that which we call an intelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name?"

"The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity."

"This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related."

"Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another."

"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous."

"It is impossible to improve the world if first the man does not improve."

"The desires of the worthless many are controlled by the desires and knowledge of the decent few."

"Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been."

"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."

"Friends have all things in common."

"The man who makes everything that leads to happiness, depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom."

"Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the fill the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas receives nothing from like.,."

"The rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know."

"The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death."

"Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions."

"The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good."

"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."

"Either never, or very seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better than the quick and energetic ones."

"To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.,."

"A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbor."

"The thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer, but the doer must be at the beck of the thing to be done, and not treat it as a secondary affair."

"All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue."