The Republic
Plato
3,663 passages indexed from The Republic (Plato) — Page 11 of 74
License: Public Domain
The Republic, passage 3415
And when the whole soul follows the philosophical principle, and there is no division, the several parts are just, and do each of them their own business, and enjoy severally the best and truest pleasures of which they are capable?
The Republic, passage 2678
Then, besides other qualities, we must try to find a naturally well-proportioned and gracious mind, which will move spontaneously towards the true being of everything.
The Republic, passage 1555
When we had got to this point in the argument, and every one saw that the definition of justice had been completely upset, Thrasymachus, instead of replying to me, said: Tell me, Socrates, have you got a nurse?
The Republic, passage 743
The oligarch changes into the democrat in the following manner:—The youth who has had a miserly bringing up, gets a taste of the drone’s honey; he meets with wild companions, who introduce him to every new pleasure.
The Republic, passage 482
Everything is and is not, as in the old riddle—‘A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a bird with a stone and not a stone.’ The mind cannot be fixed on either alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable objects are the proper matter of knowledge.
The Republic, passage 1975
You mean, I said, if I understand you aright, that there is one sort of narrative style which may be employed by a truly good man when he has anything to say, and that another sort will be used by a man of an opposite character and education.
The Republic, passage 3253
After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown.
The Republic, passage 52
It is not prose but poetry, at least a great part of it, and ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the probabilities of history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas into an artistic whole; they take possession of him and are too much for him. We have no need therefore to discuss whether a State such as Plato has conceived is practicable or not, or whether the outward form or the inward life came first into the mind of the writer.
The Republic, passage 54
It is in the fifth, sixth, and seventh books that Plato reaches the ‘summit of speculation,’ and these, although they fail to satisfy the requirements of a modern thinker, may therefore be regarded as the most important, as they are also the most original, portions of the work.
The Republic, passage 1188
We ask, with Aristotle, What is the use of a man knowing the idea of good, if he does not know what is good for this individual, this state, this condition of society? We cannot understand how Plato’s legislators or guardians are to be fitted for their work of statesmen by the study of the five mathematical sciences. We vainly search in Plato’s own writings for any explanation of this seeming absurdity.
The Republic, passage 3421
But if so, the tyrant will live most unpleasantly, and the king most pleasantly?
The Republic, passage 2687
I perceive, I said, that you are vastly amused at having plunged me into such a hopeless discussion; but now hear the parable, and then you will be still more amused at the meagreness of my imagination: for the manner in which the best men are treated in their own States is so grievous that no single thing on earth is comparable to it; and therefore, if I am to plead their cause, I must have recourse to fiction, and put together a figure made up of many things, like the fabulous unions of goats and stags which are found in pictures.
The Republic, passage 1999
Quite the reverse, he replied; and if so the Dorian and the Phrygian are the only ones which you have left.
The Republic, passage 3426
Then the tyrant is removed from true pleasure by the space of a number which is three times three?
The Republic, passage 1157
He did not consider that the desire of a noble offspring was a passion among the Spartans, or that their physical superiority was to be attributed chiefly, not to their marriage customs, but to their temperance and training. He did not reflect that Sparta was great, not in consequence of the relaxation of morality, but in spite of it, by virtue of a political principle stronger far than existed in any other Grecian state.
The Republic, passage 1882
And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?
The Republic, passage 2899
But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below—if, I say, they had been released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now.
The Republic, passage 1926
Neither is Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, to be approved or deemed to have given his pupil good counsel when he told him that he should take the gifts of the Greeks and assist them; but that without a gift he should not lay aside his anger. Neither will we believe or acknowledge Achilles himself to have been such a lover of money that he took Agamemnon’s gifts, or that when he had received payment he restored the dead body of Hector, but that without payment he was unwilling to do so.
The Republic, passage 2496
But is there not another name which people give to their rulers in other States?
The Republic, passage 1439
May I ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was for the most part inherited or acquired by you?
The Republic, passage 1616
And what would you say of the physician? In prescribing meats and drinks would he wish to go beyond another physician or beyond the practice of medicine?
The Republic, passage 3093
This the Muses affirm to be the stock from which discord has sprung, wherever arising; and this is their answer to us.
The Republic, passage 2925
A something which all arts and sciences and intelligences use in common, and which every one first has to learn among the elements of education.
The Republic, passage 775
The two next stages in the decline of constitutions have even less historical foundation. For there is no trace in Greek history of a polity like the Spartan or Cretan passing into an oligarchy of wealth, or of the oligarchy of wealth passing into a democracy.
The Republic, passage 1868
Do you not know, I said, that the true lie, if such an expression may be allowed, is hated of gods and men?
The Republic, passage 3610
Then, as the cause is decided, I demand on behalf of justice that the estimation in which she is held by gods and men and which we acknowledge to be her due should now be restored to her by us; since she has been shown to confer reality, and not to deceive those who truly possess her, let what has been taken from her be given back, that so she may win that palm of appearance which is hers also, and which she gives to her own.
The Republic, passage 3569
Notwithstanding this, let us assure our sweet friend and the sister arts of imitation, that if she will only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be delighted to receive her—we are very conscious of her charms; but we may not on that account betray the truth. I dare say, Glaucon, that you are as much charmed by her as I am, especially when she appears in Homer?
The Republic, passage 2696
The pilot should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by him—that is not the order of nature; neither are ‘the wise to go to the doors of the rich’—the ingenious author of this saying told a lie—but the truth is, that, when a man is ill, whether he be rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and he who wants to be governed, to him who is able to govern.
The Republic, passage 2804
What, he said, is there a knowledge still higher than this—higher than justice and the other virtues?
The Republic, passage 1955
You have conceived my meaning perfectly; and if I mistake not, what you failed to apprehend before is now made clear to you, that poetry and mythology are, in some cases, wholly imitative—instances of this are supplied by tragedy and comedy; there is likewise the opposite style, in which the poet is the only speaker—of this the dithyramb affords the best example; and the combination of both is found in epic, and in several other styles of poetry. Do I take you with me?
The Republic, passage 1098
The Athenian woman was in no way the equal of her husband; she was not the entertainer of his guests or the mistress of his house, but only his housekeeper and the mother of his children. She took no part in military or political matters; nor is there any instance in the later ages of Greece of a woman becoming famous in literature. ‘Hers is the greatest glory who has the least renown among men,’ is the historian’s conception of feminine excellence.
The Republic, passage 3182
And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in this State, even if you have the capacity, or to be governed, unless you like, or go to war when the rest go to war, or to be at peace when others are at peace, unless you are so disposed—there being no necessity also, because some law forbids you to hold office or be a dicast, that you should not hold office or be a dicast, if you have a fancy—is not this a way of life which for the moment is supremely delightful?
The Republic, passage 2942
The eye certainly did see both small and great, but only in a confused manner; they were not distinguished.
The Republic, passage 1319
(7) Though the work is in most respects inferior, there are a few passages in the Laws, such as the honour due to the soul, the evils of licentious or unnatural love, the whole of Book x. (religion), the dishonesty of retail trade, and bequests, which come more home to us, and contain more of what may be termed the modern element in Plato than almost anything in the Republic.
The Republic, passage 1182
No organization is needed except a political, which, regarded from another point of view, is a military one. The State is all-sufficing for the wants of man, and, like the idea of the Church in later ages, absorbs all other desires and affections.
The Republic, passage 2976
Yes, he said, there is a remarkable charm in them. But I do not clearly understand the change in the order. First you began with a geometry of plane surfaces?
The Republic, passage 1933
And therefore let us put an end to such tales, lest they engender laxity of morals among the young.
The Republic, passage 3178
And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to order for himself his own life as he pleases?
The Republic, passage 1045
The love of another church or country when seen at a distance only, the longing for an imaginary simplicity in civilized times, the fond desire of a past which never has been, or of a future which never will be,—these are aspirations of the human mind which are often felt among ourselves. Such feelings meet with a response in the Republic of Plato.
The Republic, passage 844
‘There I suspect that you are right.’ Say rather, ‘I am sure;’ conjecture is out of place in an enquiry of this nature. He is like a wealthy owner of slaves, only he has more of them than any private individual. You will say, ‘The owners of slaves are not generally in any fear of them.’ But why? Because the whole city is in a league which protects the individual.
The Republic, passage 1456
Certainly not; for he thinks that a friend ought always to do good to a friend and never evil.
The Republic, passage 1147
Nothing that we know of in the circumstances of their birth or lineage will explain their appearance. Of the English poets of the last and two preceding centuries scarcely a descendant remains,—none have ever been distinguished. So deeply has nature hidden her secret, and so ridiculous is the fancy which has been entertained by some that we might in time by suitable marriage arrangements or, as Plato would have said, ‘by an ingenious system of lots,’ produce a Shakespeare or a Milton.
The Republic, passage 3456
In the next place, he will regulate his bodily habit and training, and so far will he be from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasures, that he will regard even health as quite a secondary matter; his first object will be not that he may be fair or strong or well, unless he is likely thereby to gain temperance, but he will always desire so to attemper the body as to preserve the harmony of the soul?
The Republic, passage 2866
You have quite conceived my meaning, I said; and now, corresponding to these four divisions, let there be four faculties in the soul—reason answering to the highest, understanding to the second, faith (or conviction) to the third, and perception of shadows to the last—and let there be a scale of them, and let us suppose that the several faculties have clearness in the same degree that their objects have truth.
The Republic, passage 2035
Then mad or intemperate pleasure must never be allowed to come near the lover and his beloved; neither of them can have any part in it if their love is of the right sort?
The Republic, passage 3649
For we have seen and know that this is the best choice both in life and after death.
The Republic, passage 1023
The earth is a sort of earth and heaven in one, like the heaven of the Phaedrus, on the back of which the spectator goes out to take a peep at the stars and is borne round in the revolution. There is no distinction between the equator and the ecliptic. But Plato is no doubt led to imagine that the planets have an opposite motion to that of the fixed stars, in order to account for their appearances in the heavens.
The Republic, passage 2907
When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the den, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth.
The Republic, passage 593
There was a need or instinct in the human soul which they satisfied; they were not ideas, but gods, and to this new mythology the men of a later generation began to attach the powers and associations of the elder deities.
The Republic, passage 2591
I dare say that you remember, and therefore I need not remind you, that a lover, if he is worthy of the name, ought to show his love, not to some one part of that which he loves, but to the whole.