“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.” 

“The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.” 

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

“When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.” 

“Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.” 

“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.” 

“I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.” 

“Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.” 

“Those who don't know must learn from those who do.” 

NOT KNOWING IT WAS THE BEST AND LAST!!!” 

“According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.” 

“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity” 

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.” 

“Time is the moving image of reality” 

“The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.” 

“Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.” 

“Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being” 

“Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.” 

“You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken....Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?

We cannot....Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts....” 

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

“Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.” 

“Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.” 

“The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.” 

“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.” 

“Knowledge is the food of the soul.” 

“...when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.” 

“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life” 

“Philosophy is the highest music.” 

“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.” 

“Ideas are the source of all things” 

“The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.” 

“What a strange thing that which men call pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with what is thought to be its opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is almost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head.” 

“And Agathon said, It is probable, Socrates, that I knew nothing of what I had said.

And yet spoke you beautifully, Agathon, he said.” 

“And I understood then that I was a fool when I told you I would take my turn in singing the honours of Love, and admitted I was terribly clever in love affairs, whereas it seems I really had no idea how a eulogy ought to be made. For I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth.” 

“No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.” 

“And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.” 

“Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.” 

“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognise that the same thing happens to the soul.” 

“If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.” 

“The man deserved his fate, deny it who can; yes, but the fate did not deserve the man.” 

“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long …arousing and persuading and reproaching…You will not easily find another like me.” 

“There is no such thing as a lover's oath. ” 

“Then we shan’t regard anyone as a lover of knowledge or wisdom who is fussy about what he studies…” 

“For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

He was a wise man who invented beer” 

“Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” 

“What shall we say about those spectators, then, who can see a plurality of beautiful things, but not beauty itself, and who are incapable of following if someone else tries to lead them to it, and who can see many moral actions, but not morality itself, and so on? That they only ever entertain beliefs, and do not know any of the things they believe?” 

“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; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from dakness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. (Included in the introduction to "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes)”