Quotes to inspire and reflect

Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended.

It's not at all uncommon to find a person's desires compelling him to go against his reason, and to see him cursing himself and venting his passion on the source of the compulsion within him. It's as if there were two warring factions, with passion fighting on the side of reason.

It would be better for me that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

It seems to me that many fall into it even against their will, and fancy they are discussing, when they are merely debating, because they cannot distinguish the meanings of a term, in their investigation of any question, but carry on their opposition to what is stated, by attacking the mere words, employing the art of debate, and not that of philosophical discussion.

It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.

It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.

It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.

It is only just that anything that up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes no one.

It is by justice, that we can authenticate a man's value or nullity, the absence of justice, is the absence of what makes him man.

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

It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn. The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke.

Isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is?

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

Is there a perfect world?

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?

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill… we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by. philosophy to complete uselessness as members of society.

You don’t seem to love money too much. And those who haven’t made their own money are usually like you. But those who have made it for themselves are twice as fond of it as those who haven’t.

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.

Is not the love of learning identical with a philosophical disposition?

If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful.

They master certain pleasures because they are mastered by others, I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that they only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom .

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

If people despise money when young, but grow to love it more and more as they grow older and no longer devote themselves to excellence as the best guardian, the power of reasoned, educated speech, leaves them.

If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.

If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes.

If a man says that it is right to give everyone his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one.

If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist?

If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.

If a man perfectly righteous should come upon earth, he would find so much opposition that he would be imprisoned, reviled, scourged, and in fine crucified by such, who, though they were extremely wicked, would yet pass for righteous men.

I used to imagine that no human can make men good; but I know better now.

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.

I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.

I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.

I perplex others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself.

I prefer nothing, unless it is true.

I must go beyond the dark world of sense information to the clear brilliance of the sunlight of the outside world. Once done, it becomes my duty to go back to the cave in order to illuminate the minds of those imprisoned in the ‘darkness’ of sensory knowledge.

I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense.

I have good hope that there is something after death.

I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.

I don't think we shall quarrel about a word the subject of our inquiry is too important for that.

I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it.

I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

I am smart because I know I nothing.

I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools.