Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.
... for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.
Those who are not schooled and practised in truth [who are not honest and upright men] can never manage aright the government, nor yet can those who spend their lives as closet philosophers; because the former have no high purpose to guide their actions, while the latter keep aloof from public life.
It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.
There is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not from the truth.
As a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.
And tell him it's quite true that the best of the philosophers are of no use to their fellows; but that he should blame, not the philosophers, but those who fail to make use of them.
The most important part of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence in which, when he grows to manhood, he will have to be perfected.
When a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.
The principles are important. First, the interest of the state or society counts for everything, that of the individual for nothing. Second, the only difference between men and women is one of physical function- one begets, the other bears children. Apart from that, they both can and should perform the same functions - though men on a whole, perform them better and should receive the same education to enable them to do so; for in this way society will get the best value from both.