Huey Newton Quotes

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

All thought is naught but a footnote 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?

When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.

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.

Plato was a bore.

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

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

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

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

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

By Hercules! I prefer to err with Plato, whom I know how much you value, than to be right in the company of such men.

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

I want to read philosophers.

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.

That's one thing I learned in my philosophy training - if you're writing a paper on Aristotle, you have to first show that you understand him. Then you can make your counterargument.

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.

I have often said that philosophy is better at questions than at answers – and that's nontrivial. They don't think it's their job to understand how things actually work, whereas I think that should be the job of philosophers.

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.

The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

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

Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato.

It must be so, Plato, thou reason'st well!