He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind
The Republic seeks a definition of justice and inquiries into the relationship between right behavior and happiness, the work delves into basic questions of ethics and psychology.
The Peloponnesian War was a big event on the backdrop of Plato’s life and times
The worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
The nature of justice and injustice is likely larger in quantity and more discernable in the state than in the individual.
The barest notion of a State must include four or five men.
Plato sort of explains the creation of the military industrial complex in his creation of the state. It expands, goes to war, and needs people who are experts at war.
A dog is a philosopher because he knows something (friend from stranger)
It is impossible that God should ever be willing to change; being, as is supposed the fairest and best that is conceivable, every God remains absolutely and forever in his own form.
No one is willingly deceived in that which is the truest and highest part of himself, or about the truest and highest matters; there, above all, he is most afraid of a lie having possession of him.
Socrates is quite a Homer hater
The good man will not consider death terrible to any other good man who is his comrade.
Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds.
A lot of philosophy comes down to defining words and defining concepts and the connection between the two. The Republic is about justice in this regard.
Let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their robe, and let them share in the tools of war and the defence of their country; only on the distribution of labors the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same.
The guardians must imitate the spirit of them in any details which are intrusted to their care.
Why are last days of Socrates so considered Socrates, but the Republic is basically the same thing but considered Plato
He must be exercised also in many kinds of knowledge, to see whether the soul will be able to endure the highest of all, or will faint under them, as in any other studies or exercises
Good in the visible world relates to sight and the things of sight. Good in the intellectual world relates to the mind and the things of the mind.
Music is the counterpart of gymnastics and trained the guardians by the influences of habit, by harmony making them harmonious, by rhythm rhythmical
We must endeavour to persuade those who are to be the principal men of our State to go and learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study until they see the nature of numbers with the mind only
A Freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind
An oligarchy is a government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.
One, sewing another grow rich, seeks to rival him, and thus the great mass of the citizens become lovers of money.
An oligarchy is not one but two states, the one of poor, the other of rich men; and they are living on the same spot and always conspiring against one another.
Tyranny springs from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy
This is sort of a good times make weak men argument
When a democracy which is thrusting for freedom has evil cup-bearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of green, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs.
In democracies, almost everything is managed by drones
This is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic.
Plato does talk a lot about intimation and it’s dangers (very Girardian, things not very hidden since the beginning of the world)
Power and good fortune must be accompanied by wisdom and justice if a man’s political actions are to be seen as noble as well as great - Plutarch on Plato (via Dion)
Both oligarchy and democracy showed to be seriously flawed in Plato’s time and the Republic was an attempt to replace them
Plato puts democracy second only to tyranny in dysfunction
Every book of the Republic is so dense and has become a reference point for the rest of history. This is definitely worth a re-read and more study.