The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Socrates28 quotes
The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention. — Socrates · 375 BCDemocracy passes into despotism. — Socrates · 375 BCFor our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives. — Socrates · 375 BCBehold! human beings living in an underground den... Like ourselves... They see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave. — Socrates · 375 BCAstronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another. — Socrates · 375 BCDemocracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. — Socrates · 375 BCAll 28 quotes →Plato5 quotes
For what should a man live, if not for the pleasures of discourse? — Plato · 370 BCFriends have all things in common. — Plato · 370 BCOf all wild creatures, the child is the most intractable. — Plato · 346 BCMy child, you are still young, and time as it advances [888b] will cause you to reverse many of the opinions you now hold: so wait till then before pronouncing judgment on matters of most grave importance; and of these the gravest of all—though at present you regard it as naught—is the question of holding a right view about the gods and so living well, or the opposite. — Plato · 346 BCYou cannot conceive the many without the one. — Plato · 340 BCCicero1 quote
For there is nothing that happens on earth that is more welcome to that supreme God who rules the whole universe than the institutions and congregations of men united by a sense of right, which are called states. — Cicero · 51 BCGeorge Santayana1 quote
Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace. — George Santayana · 1925Nicias1 quote
Who has knowledge of what is to be dreaded and what is not—the man whom I call courageous? — Nicias · 380 BCThrasymachus1 quote
What I say is that "just" or "right" means nothing but what is to the interest of the stronger party. — Thrasymachus · 375 BC