The Republic Quotes

“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

“In the "Republic," Plato vigorously attacked the oral, poetized form as a vehicle for communicating knowledge. He pleaded for a more precise method of communication and classification ("The Ideas"), one which would favor the investigation of facts, principles of reality, human nature, and conduct. What the Greeks meant by "poetry" was radically different from what we mean by poetry. Their "poetic" expression was a product of a collective psyche and mind. The mimetic form, a technique that exploited rhythm, meter and music, achieved the desired psychological response in the listener. Listeners could memorize with greater ease what was sung than what was said. Plato attacked this method because it discouraged disputation and argument. It was in his opinion the chief obstacle to abstract, speculative reasoning - he called it "a poison, and an enemy of the people.”
― Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

“Some people are born to get married, have children and live happily ever after, and others to became philosophers.”
― Plato, The Republic

“SOCRATES: But I think that finally he would be in the condition to look at the sun itself, not just at its reflection whether in water or wherever else it might appear, but at the sun itself, as it is in and of itself and in the place proper to it and to contemplate of what sort it is.”
― Plato, The Republic

“The Dialogues remain one of the priceless treasures of the world. The best of them, The Republic, is a complete treatise in itself, Plato reduced to a book; here we shall find his metaphysics, his theology, his ethics, his psychology, his pedagogy, his politics, his theory of art.

He we shall find problems reeking with modernity and contemporary savor: communism and socialism, feminism and birth-control and eugenics, Nietzschean problems of morality and aristocracy, Rousseauian problems of return to nature and libertarian education, Bergsonian elan vital and Freudian psychoanalysis - everything is here.

It is a feast for the elite, served by unstinting host. "Plato is philosophy and philosophy is Plato" says Emerson; and awards to The Republic of Omar about the Koran: "Burn the libraries, for their value is in this book.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“...Temperance, which they nickname Unmanliness...”
― Plato

“In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of publication, and an author would have the less scruple in altering or adding to a work which was known only to a few of his friends.”
― Plato, Republic, Books 1-2

“the true ruler is not meant by nature to regard his own interest, but that of his subjects”
― Plato, The Republic

“Plato didn't have as much experience of humanity as he needed when he wrote a book like the Republic,' Socrates said. 'Perhaps nobody does.”
― Jo Walton, The Just City

“Unii oameni sunt născuți să se căsătorească, să facă copii și să trăiască fericiți până la adânci bătrâneti iar alții să devină filosofi." ~ Platon”
― Platon

“Not only poetry but also music in the ordinary sense of the term are to be controlled by a rigid censorship, and both are to be devoted entirely to strengthening the stability of the state by making the young more conscious of class discipline, and thus more ready to serve class interests. Plato even forgets that it is the function of music to make the young more gentle, for he demands such forms of music as will make them braver, i.e. fiercer. (Considering that Plato was an Athenian, his arguments concerning music proper appear to me almost incredible in their superstitious intolerance, especially if compared with a more enlightened contemporary criticism. But even now he has many musicians on his side, possibly because they are flattered by his high opinion of the importance of music, i.e. of its political power. The same is true of educationists, and even more of philosophers, since Plato demands that they should rule.)
The political principle that determines the education of the soul, namely, the preservation of the stability of the state, determines also that of the body. The aim is simply that of Sparta.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato