Continued Insights from Plato

"It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other"

"We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue"

"No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern"

"Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good"

"To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed"

"The beginning is the most important part of the work"

"One man cannot practice many arts with success"

"He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden"

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind"

"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way"

"To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils"

"Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others"

"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous"

"The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles"

"Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety"

"Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom"

"They certainly give very strange names to diseases"

"There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself"

"The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men"

"The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so"

"The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery"

"The measure of a man is what he does with power"

"Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half"

"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education"

"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector"

"Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself"

"Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others"

"For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions"

"For good nurture and education implant good constitutions"

"For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories"

"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery"

"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments"

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet"

"Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal"