Quotes to inspire and reflect

Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

The good is the beautiful.

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

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.

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.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

We do not learn. And what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

Necessity... the mother of invention.

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

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

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.

No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

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

Philosophy is the highest music.

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

Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.

Knowledge is true opinion.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

Science is nothing but perception.

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.

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

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

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

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

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.