Republic (Plato) Quotes

But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only.

Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meant for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

A fit of laughter, which has been indulged to excess, almost always produces a violent reaction.

Truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity — I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.