Quotes to inspire and reflect

Let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.

Life is a short exile

Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.

Let him take heart who does advance, even in the smallest degree.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

Knowledge is the food of the soul.

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

Justice, although it resembles a mirage, is really concerned with internal rather than external activity, with the true self and its business.

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

Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large.

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'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'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 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 only the dead who have seen the end of war.

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

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 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 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?

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

Is there a perfect world?

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 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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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.

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.

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

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

I prefer nothing, unless it is true.