{"quotes":[{"text":"And, believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.","author":"Galileo Galilei","tags":["mathematics","plato","science"],"id":3095,"author_id":"Galileo+Galilei"},{"text":"Philosophy is a bitter medicine with many fearsome side effects, but if you are able to stomach it, it can cure your soul of the many ills and infirmities of ignorance. Given the choice, most men prefer not to take it, and many of those who do soon find that they cannot carry on with it. In the end, they choose what is more pleasant over what is more wholesome, and prefer the society of those who encourage them in their follies to that of those who admonish and improve them. You, on the other hand, appear to be minded otherwise, for when a young men sets for himself the highest standards of education and conduct, he naturally shuns the company of mindless nobodies and boldly seeks out that of the singular men who are prepared to teach him and challenge him and exhort him to virtue. In time, by his strivings, he will come to realize that it is from the hardest toil and noblest deeds that the purest and most persisting pleasures are to be had, and, taking pity on other men, and thinking also of the gods, he will do everything in his power to share this precious secret.","author":"Neel Burton","tags":["medicine","philosophy","plato"],"id":5198,"author_id":"Neel+Burton"},{"text":"... When someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won't laugh mindlessly, but he'll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brillance.","author":"Plato","tags":["allegory-of-the-cave","light","plato","republic","soul"],"id":8234,"author_id":"Plato"},{"text":"The matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice ...","author":"Plato","tags":["phaedrus","philosophy","plato","rhetoric","speech","wisdom"],"id":10525,"author_id":"Plato"},{"text":"Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.","author":"Aristotle","tags":["me","plato","still "],"id":18282,"author_id":"Aristotle"},{"text":"A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.","author":"Plato","tags":["composition","holy","inspiration","plato","poet","reason","senses"],"id":18432,"author_id":"Plato"},{"text":"No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.","author":"Robert McKee","tags":["citizens","civilization","destruction","knowledge","learning","plato"],"id":21672,"author_id":"Robert+McKee"},{"text":"As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.","author":"Plato","tags":["inquiry","philosophy","plato","questions","thinking"],"id":23491,"author_id":"Plato"},{"text":"Do you know, when I am with you I am not afraid at all. It is a magic altogether curious that happens inside the heart. I wish I could take it with me when I leave.It is sad, my Grey. We are constrained by the rules of this Game we play. There is not one little place under those rules for me to be with you happily. Or apart happily, which is what makes it so unfair.I have discovered a curious fact about myself. An hour ago I was sure you were dead, and it hurt very much. Now you are alive, and it is only that I must leave you, and I find that even more painful. That is not at all logical.Do you know the Symposium, Grey? The Symposium of Plato. [He] says that lovers are like two parts of an egg that fit together perfectly. Each half is made for the other, the single match to it. We are incomplete alone. Together, we are whole. All men are seeking that other half of themselves. Do you remember?I think you are the other half of me. It was a great mix-up in heaven. A scandal. For you there was meant to be a pretty English schoolgirl in the city of Bath and for me some fine Italian pastry cook in Palermo. But the cradles were switched somehow, and it all ended up like this…of an impossibility beyond words.I wish I had never met you. And in all my life I will not forget lying beside you, body to body, and wanting you.","author":"Joanna Bourne","tags":["love","plato","soulmates","spies","two-halves-of-a-whole"],"id":25142,"author_id":"Joanna+Bourne"},{"text":"Men are not born equal in themselves, so I think it beneath a man to postulate that they are. If I thought myself as good as Sokrates I should be a fool; and if, not really believing it, I asked you to make me happy by assuring me of it, you would rightly despise me. So why should I insult my fellow-citizens by treating them as fools and cowards? A man who thinks himself as good as everyone else will be at no pains to grow better. On the other hand, I might think myself as good as Sokrates, and even persuade other fools to agree with me; but under a democracy, Sokrates is there in the Agora to prove me wrong. I want a city where I can find my equals and respect my betters, whoever they are; and where no one can tell me to swallow a lie because it is expedient, or some other man's will.","author":"Mary Renault","tags":["alcibiades","athens","classical","democracy","fifth-century","greece","historical-fiction","philosophy","plato","socrates","sparta"],"id":27623,"author_id":"Mary+Renault"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":66,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}