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Students
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The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.
-Plato
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Suicide
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Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away ... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.
-Plato, Phaedo
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Teaching
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No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.
-Plato
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Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
-Plato
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Thought
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Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself.
-Plato
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Time
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They are all parts of time, and the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say that he was, he is, he will be, but the truth is that is alone is properly attributed to him, and that was and will be only to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but that which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger by time, nor ever did or has become, or hereafter will be, older or younger, nor is subject at all to any of those states which affect moving and sensible things and of which generation is the cause. These are the forms of time, which imitates eternity and revolves according to a law of number. Moreover, when we say that what has become is become and what becomes is becoming, and that what will become is about to become and that the non-existent is non-existent-all these are inaccurate modes of expression...
-Plato, Timaeus (Translated by Benjamin Jowett), 360
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Truth
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Truth is its own reward.
-Plato
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They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.
-Plato
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Tyranny
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The people always have some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
-Plato
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Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
-Plato
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Unity
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Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.
-Plato, The Laws
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Victory
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Self conquest is the greatest of victories.
-Plato
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Virtue
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The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
-Plato
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Wealth
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Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
-Plato
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For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.
-Plato
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Wisdom
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Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
-Plato
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The wisest have the most authority.
-Plato
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Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.
-Plato
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Worry
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Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
-Plato
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Books by and about Plato