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“Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Here's something else I'd like your opinion about," I said. "If he went back underground and sat down again in the same spot, wouldn't the sudden transition from the sunlight mean that his eyes would be overwhelmed by darkness?"

"Certainly," he replied.

"Now, the process of adjustment would be quite long this time, and suppose that before his eyes had settled down and while he wasn't seeing well, he had once again to compete against those same old prisoners at identifying those shadows. Would he make a fool of himself? Wouldn't they say that he'd come back from his upward journey with his eyes ruined, and that it wasn't even worth trying to go up there? And would they -- if they could -- grab hold of anyone who tried to set them free and take them up there and kill him?”
― Plato, The Republic

“Do you mean that the tyrant will dare to use violence against the people who fathered him, and raise his hand against them if they oppose him? So the tyrant is a parricide, and little comfort to his old parent.”
― Plato, The Republic

“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. But I'm sure you won't claim that you had ever, in yourself or in anyone else, met a case of passion siding with his desires against the rational mind, when the rational mind prohibits resistance.”
― Plato, The Republic

“...we must go where the argument carries us, as a vessel runs before the wind.”
― Plato, The Republic

“He who is of a 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.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Physical excellence does not of itself produce a good mind and character: on the other hand, excellence of mind and character will make the best of the physique it is given.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race." (Republic 473c-d)”
― Plato, The Republic

“It is only just that anything that grows up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes no one.”
― Plato, The Republic

“I shall try to persuade first the Rulers and soldiers, and then the rest of the community, that the upbringing and education we have given them was all something that happened to them only in a dream. In reality they were fashioned and reared, and their arms and equipment manufactured, in the depths of the earth, and Earth herself, their mother, brought them up, when they were complete, into the light of day; so now they must think of the land in which they live as their mother and protect her if she is attacked, while their fellow citizens they must regard as brothers born of the same mother earthâ€�. That is the story. Do you know of any way of making them believe it?â€�
“Not in the first generation,â€� he said, “but you might succeed with the second, and later generations.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Haven't you noticed that opinion without knowledge is always a poor thing? At the best it is blind—isn't anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding like a blind man on the right road?”
― Plato, The Republic

“You take the words in the sense which is most damaging to the argument.”
― Plato, The Republic

“.. the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes...”
― Plato, The Republic

“There's no chance of their having a conscious glimpse of the truth as long as they refuse to disturb the things they take for granted and remain incapable of explaining them. For if your starting-point is unknown, and your end-point and intermediate stages are woven together out of unknown material, there may be coherence, but knowledge is completely out of the question.”
― Plato, The Republic

“All the same, we ought to point out that if the kinds of poetry and representation which are designed merely to give pleasure can come up with a rational argument for their inclusion in a well-governed community, we'd be delighted -- short of compromising the truth as we see it, which wouldn't be right -- to bring them back from exile: after all, we know from our own experience all about their spell. I mean haven't you ever fallen under the spell of poetry, Glaucon, especially when the spectacle is provided by Homer?”
― Plato, The Republic

“The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.”
― Plato, The Republic

“But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye”
― Plato, The Republic

“The beginning is the most important part of any work.”
― Plato, The Republic

“The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not because it is a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Socrates: I'm afraid that it might actually be sacrilegious to stand idly by while morality is being denigrated and not try to assist as long as one has breath in one's body and a voice to protest with.”
― Plato, The Republic

“...each individual can only do one thing well. He can't do lots of things. If he tries, he will be jack of all trades, and master of none.”
― Socrates, The Republic

“The comprehensive mind is always dialectical.”
― Plato, The Republic

“And I think that you must have observed again and again what a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.”
― Plato, The Republic

“I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of [c] the stronger.”
― Plato, The Republic

“We've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own ... Then, it turns out that this doing one's own work-provided that it comes to be in a certain way-is justice.”
― Plato, The Republic

“The man who has no self-respect, on the contrary, will imitate anybody and anything; sounds of nature and cries of animals alike; his whole performance will be imitation of gesture and voice.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Why, a dog, whenever he sees a stranger, is angry; when an acquaintance, he welcomes him, although the one has never done him any harm, nor the other any good. Did this never strike you as curious? The matter never struck me before; but I quite recognise the truth of your remark. And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming;—your dog is a true philosopher. Why? Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance? Most”
― Plato, The Republic