The Republic
Plato
3,663 passages indexed from The Republic (Plato) — Page 69 of 74
License: Public Domain
The Republic, passage 201
But then again imports will be required, and imports necessitate exports, and this implies variety of produce in order to attract the taste of purchasers; also merchants and ships. In the city too we must have a market and money and retail trades; otherwise buyers and sellers will never meet, and the valuable time of the producers will be wasted in vain efforts at exchange. If we add hired servants the State will be complete.
The Republic, passage 348
If I went to a sculptor and blamed him for having painted the eye, which is the noblest feature of the face, not purple but black, he would reply: ‘The eye must be an eye, and you should look at the statue as a whole.’ ‘Now I can well imagine a fool’s paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking, clothed in purple and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their wheel at hand, that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers and all the other classes of a State lose their distinctive character.
The Republic, passage 2229
And what is the name which the city derives from the possession of this sort of knowledge?
The Republic, passage 3061
They will begin by sending out into the country all the inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and will take possession of their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; these they will train in their own habits and laws, I mean in the laws which we have given them: and in this way the State and constitution of which we were speaking will soonest and most easily attain happiness, and the nation which has such a constitution will gain most.
The Republic, passage 1315
(3) The most conspicuous defect of the Laws is the failure of dramatic power, whereas the Republic is full of striking contrasts of ideas and oppositions of character.
The Republic, passage 2185
Yes, I replied, in the form of amusement; and at first sight it appears harmless.
The Republic, passage 3484
Because even if He had made but two, a third would still appear behind them which both of them would have for their idea, and that would be the ideal bed and not the two others.
The Republic, passage 1932
‘The kindred of the gods, the relatives of Zeus, whose ancestral altar, the altar of Zeus, is aloft in air on the peak of Ida,’
The Republic, passage 1255
Mathematics in the age of Plato comprehended a very small part of that which is now included in them; but they bore a much larger proportion to the sum of human knowledge. They were the only organon of thought which the human mind at that time possessed, and the only measure by which the chaos of particulars could be reduced to rule and order.
The Republic, passage 2271
Let us look at the question from another point of view: Are not the rulers in a State those to whom you would entrust the office of determining suits at law?
The Republic, passage 2548
Yes, I said; and when a man dies gloriously in war shall we not say, in the first place, that he is of the golden race?
The Republic, passage 2409
And must not we swim and try to reach the shore: we will hope that Arion’s dolphin or some other miraculous help may save us?
The Republic, passage 70
But he is incapable of defending them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion with banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers in Thucydides; but we are concerned at present with Plato’s description of him, and not with the historical reality.
The Republic, passage 2439
And this is what the arts of music and gymnastic, when present in such manner as we have described, will accomplish?
The Republic, passage 2663
Truthfulness: they will never intentionally receive into their mind falsehood, which is their detestation, and they will love the truth.
The Republic, passage 3160
Next comes democracy; of this the origin and nature have still to be considered by us; and then we will enquire into the ways of the democratic man, and bring him up for judgment.
The Republic, passage 2076
All that, Socrates, is excellent; but I should like to put a question to you: Ought there not to be good physicians in a State, and are not the best those who have treated the greatest number of constitutions good and bad? and are not the best judges in like manner those who are acquainted with all sorts of moral natures?
The Republic, passage 3207
There is a battle and they gain the day, and then modesty, which they call silliness, is ignominiously thrust into exile by them, and temperance, which they nickname unmanliness, is trampled in the mire and cast forth; they persuade men that moderation and orderly expenditure are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble of evil appetites, they drive them beyond the border.
The Republic, passage 3072
Then, like a wrestler, he replied, you must put yourself again in the same position; and let me ask the same questions, and do you give me the same answer which you were about to give me then.
The Republic, passage 1708
‘As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god, Maintains justice; to whom the black earth brings forth Wheat and barley, whose trees are bowed with fruit, And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives him fish.’
The Republic, passage 3262
But when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
The Republic, passage 124
‘Socrates,’ he says, ‘what folly is this?—Why do you agree to be vanquished by one another in a pretended argument?’ He then prohibits all the ordinary definitions of justice; to which Socrates replies that he cannot tell how many twelve is, if he is forbidden to say 2 x 6, or 3 x 4, or 6 x 2, or 4 x 3. At first Thrasymachus is reluctant to argue; but at length, with a promise of payment on the part of the company and of praise from Socrates, he is induced to open the game.
The Republic, passage 2626
And do we know what we opine? or is the subject-matter of opinion the same as the subject-matter of knowledge?
The Republic, passage 1611
And the unjust man will strive and struggle to obtain more than the unjust man or action, in order that he may have more than all?
The Republic, passage 2197
Yes, I said, my friend, if God will only preserve to them the laws which we have given them.
The Republic, passage 1484
Very true, he said: and I think that we had better correct an error into which we seem to have fallen in the use of the words ‘friend’ and ‘enemy.’
The Republic, passage 1405
More interesting than either of these, and far more Platonic in style and thought, is Sir John Eliot’s ‘Monarchy of Man,’ in which the prisoner of the Tower, no longer able ‘to be a politician in the land of his birth,’ turns away from politics to view ‘that other city which is within him,’ and finds on the very threshold of the grave that the secret of human happiness is the mastery of self.
The Republic, passage 3535
And that which is opposed to them is one of the inferior principles of the soul?
The Republic, passage 1546
Or have they no need either of themselves or of another?—having no faults or defects, they have no need to correct them, either by the exercise of their own art or of any other; they have only to consider the interest of their subject-matter. For every art remains pure and faultless while remaining true—that is to say, while perfect and unimpaired. Take the words in your precise sense, and tell me whether I am not right.
The Republic, passage 1610
And what of the unjust—does he claim to have more than the just man and to do more than is just?
The Republic, passage 375
(4) The humorous pictures of the lean dogs and the fatted sheep, of the light active boxer upsetting two stout gentlemen at least, of the ‘charming’ patients who are always making themselves worse; or again, the playful assumption that there is no State but our own; or the grave irony with which the statesman is excused who believes that he is six feet high because he is told so, and having nothing to measure with is to be pardoned for his ignorance—he is too amusing for us to be seriously angry with him.
The Republic, passage 2203
Nor would you praise the behaviour of States which act like the men whom I was just now describing. For are there not ill-ordered States in which the citizens are forbidden under pain of death to alter the constitution; and yet he who most sweetly courts those who live under this regime and indulges them and fawns upon them and is skilful in anticipating and gratifying their humours is held to be a great and good statesman—do not these States resemble the persons whom I was describing?
The Republic, passage 969
The eye or mind which feels as well as sees can give dignity and pathos to a ruined mill, or a straw-built shed (Rembrandt), to the hull of a vessel ‘going to its last home’ (Turner). Still more would this apply to the greatest works of art, which seem to be the visible embodiment of the divine.
The Republic, passage 1068
There are serious errors which have a side of truth and which therefore may fairly demand a careful consideration: there are truths mixed with error of which we may indeed say, ‘The half is better than the whole.’ Yet ‘the half’ may be an important contribution to the study of human nature.
The Republic, passage 1695
I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of them.
The Republic, passage 1344
He shows nothing of the spirit which led others of the early Christian Fathers to recognize in the writings of the Greek philosophers the power of the divine truth. He traces the parallel of the kingdom of God, that is, the history of the Jews, contained in their scriptures, and of the kingdoms of the world, which are found in gentile writers, and pursues them both into an ideal future.
The Republic, passage 1066
2. The idea of the perfect State is full of paradox when judged of according to the ordinary notions of mankind. The paradoxes of one age have been said to become the commonplaces of the next; but the paradoxes of Plato are at least as paradoxical to us as they were to his contemporaries. The modern world has either sneered at them as absurd, or denounced them as unnatural and immoral; men have been pleased to find in Aristotle’s criticisms of them the anticipation of their own good sense.
The Republic, passage 976
He himself ceased to be a poet when he became a disciple of Socrates; though, as he tells us of Solon, ‘he might have been one of the greatest of them, if he had not been deterred by other pursuits’ (Tim.) Thus from many points of view there is an antagonism between Plato and the poets, which was foreshadowed to him in the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry. The poets, as he says in the Protagoras, were the Sophists of their day; and his dislike of the one class is reflected on the other.
The Republic, passage 3383
Clearly that of the soldier and lover of honour; who is nearer to himself than the money-maker.
The Republic, passage 2470
And I think that our braver and better youth, besides their other honours and rewards, might have greater facilities of intercourse with women given them; their bravery will be a reason, and such fathers ought to have as many sons as possible.
The Republic, passage 115
And there is another difficulty: justice, like the art of war or any other art, must be of opposites, good at attack as well as at defence, at stealing as well as at guarding. But then justice is a thief, though a hero notwithstanding, like Autolycus, the Homeric hero, who was ‘excellent above all men in theft and perjury’—to such a pass have you and Homer and Simonides brought us; though I do not forget that the thieving must be for the good of friends and the harm of enemies.
The Republic, passage 3231
Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny.
The Republic, passage 2797
Yes, he said, you are quite right in testing him. But what do you mean by the highest of all knowledge?
The Republic, passage 2243
Two virtues remain to be discovered in the State—first, temperance, and then justice which is the end of our search.
The Republic, passage 429
BOOK V. I was going to enumerate the four forms of vice or decline in states, when Polemarchus—he was sitting a little farther from me than Adeimantus—taking him by the coat and leaning towards him, said something in an undertone, of which I only caught the words, ‘Shall we let him off?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said Adeimantus, raising his voice. Whom, I said, are you not going to let off? ‘You,’ he said. Why?
The Republic, passage 1443
For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others.
The Republic, passage 2546
Again, there is another manner in which, according to Homer, brave youths should be honoured; for he tells how Ajax, after he had distinguished himself in battle, was rewarded with long chines, which seems to be a compliment appropriate to a hero in the flower of his age, being not only a tribute of honour but also a very strengthening thing.
The Republic, passage 2833
Then reflect; has the ear or voice need of any third or additional nature in order that the one may be able to hear and the other to be heard?
The Republic, passage 40
Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is within, and yet developes into a Church or external kingdom; ‘the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ is reduced to the proportions of an earthly building. Or, to use a Platonic image, justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through the whole texture.
The Republic, passage 249
In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance consists in self-control and obedience to authority. That is a lesson which Homer teaches in some places: ‘The Achaeans marched on breathing prowess, in silent awe of their leaders;’—but a very different one in other places: ‘O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog, but the heart of a stag.’ Language of the latter kind will not impress self-control on the minds of youth.