Shocking Sayings

The soul can have no escape of security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can. For it takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training...

Why should we pay so much attention to what 'most people' think?

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

In Timaeus, Plato quipped that men who were cowardly and unjust in this life would certainly come back as women in the next.

There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.

The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we n…

The best of either sex should be united with the best as often as possible, and the worst with the worst as seldom as possible; and that the offspring of the former should be reared, and that of the second destroyed.

The procreation of children shall be regulated by the magistrates.

They will take the children of the good parents to the crèche, and those of the inferior parents, or any child of the good parents that is born deformed, they will hide away in some secret and unknown place, as they should.

Women and children are to be common; and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent.

The poets, beginning with Homer, are to be banished from the ideal city because they appeal to the emotions and irrational parts of the soul, and distort the truth.

The unrighteous, if they escape punishment, are not truly blessed, but are the most unfortunate of all.

The ignorance of one who thinks he knows what he does not know, is the cause of all errors.

The state is an individual on a large scale.

The general principle of the state, that of justice, is for everyone to do their own business and not to be a busybody.

The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

The laws of the State are not made for the good of the individual, but for the good of the whole.