Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.

All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.

I read Plato's 'Republic.' I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

The first book I ever really read was Plato's 'Republic,' and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?

It is true, indeed, that the account Plato gives in 'Timaeus' is different from what he says in his so-called 'unwritten teachings.'

There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:-never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them written in his hand.

My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.

The genius of the Platonists, is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of it can I detach from all their books.

I conceived 'All Is Song' as a modernised, loosely interpreted version of Socrates's life.

Plato was a bore.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

I was reading Plato's 'The Republic' at age 18, and I can't account fully the electricity that had for me.

The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for wisdom, and this means a short roll call of names; Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epicurus, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.

My favorite class as an undergraduate was a political theory class on justice. Now, 'justice' is hardly a self-defining term, and much smarter men than I have developed various definitions over the centuries. The class put Plato at one end and Nietzsche at the other, and off we went.

I remember seeing a stage version of Plato's 'Symposium' and being really moved because it was written by a man rather than a culture.

Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure.

Socrates... Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'd Wisest of men.

Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.

I like people who like Plato.

The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind.