Plato Republic Quotes

#1. While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?

Thomas Jefferson

#2. 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

#3. And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.

Socrates

#4. When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.

Robert Nozick

#5. Paraphrasing Plato's Republic: Only people who have allowed themselves to be reformed by reality have it in themselves to reform their polis for the better.

Rebecca Goldstein

#6. In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#7. Music does affect your opinions. Plato is supposed to have said "It's very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music into the republic."

Pete Seeger

#8. He talks like he's living in Plato's Republic, not Romulus's shit-hole.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#9. I was reading Plato's 'The Republic' at age 18, and I can't account fully the electricity that had for me.

Raymond Moody

#10. Do not expect Plato's ideal republic; be satisfied with even the smallest step forward, and consider this no small achievement.

Marcus Aurelius

#11. The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants.

Plato

#12. Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages, which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of what was involved in its proposals.

Bertrand Russell

#13. 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

#14. For he (Cato) gives his opinion as if he were in Plato's Republic, not in Romulus' cesspool.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#15. The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

Plato

#16. He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.

Plato

#17. As Deng Xiaoping once said, "I don't care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice." The Stoics had their own reminder: "Don't go expecting Plato's Republic." Because

Ryan Holiday

#18. I read Plato's 'Republic.' I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

Huey Newton

#19. The Republic isn't as much fun as The Symposium. It's all long speeches, and nobody bursting in drunk to woo Socrates in the middle.

Jo Walton

#20. Reading only a bit of a great book (e.g., Plato's Republic) is like getting engaged but never marrying. The initial experience is pleasurable but can become frustrating if prolonged.

John Reynolds

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

Plato

#22. That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.

Bertrand Russell

#23. In 'The Republic' he [Plato] states that the enjoyment of food is not a true pleasure because the purpose of eating is to relieve pain - hunger.

Mark Kurlansky

#24. Do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.

Marcus Aurelius