DIALOGUES OF PLATO – The Republic
QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION
Book 6
The true lover of
learning then must from his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all
truth?
… He whose desires
are strong in one direction will have them weaker in others; they will be like
a stream which has been drawn off into another channel.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 374
Philosophical minds:
always love knowledge
…
truthfulness … the
will never intentionally receive … falsehood … from earliest youth desires all
truth … absorbed in pleasure of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasures
…
temperate and the
reverse …
no secret corner of
illiberality …
whether a man is just
and gentle or rude or unsociable; these are the signs which distinguish even in
youth the philosophical nature from the unphilosophical.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 374
Pleasure in learning;
for no one will love that which gives him pain and in which after much toil he
makes little progress.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 374-5
The philosopher
should have a good memory
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 375
Try to find a
naturally well-proportioned and gracious mind, which will move spontaneously
towards the true being of everything … And to men like him, I said, … when
perfected by years of education and to these only you will entrust the state.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 375
…but when you talk in
this way, a strange feeling passes over the minds of your hearers; They fancy
that they are led astray a little at each step in the argument, owing to their
own want of skill in asking and answering questions; these littles accumulate ,
and at the end of the discussion that are found to have sustained a mighty
overthrow and all their former motions appear to be turned upside down … for
they have nothing to say in this new game of which words are the counters…
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 375
Will he not hate a
lie?
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 375
… why so many are
spoiled and so few escape spoiling – I am speaking of those who were said to be
useless, but not wicked – and, when we have done with them, we will speak of
the imitators of philosophy, what manner of men are they who aspire after a
profession which is above them, by their manifold inconsistencies,
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 377
… the most gifted
minds, when they are ill –educated become pre-eminently bad? Do not great
crimes and the spirit of pure evil spring out of a fulness of nature ruined by
education rather than from any inferiority, whereas weak natures are scarcely
capable of any very great good or very great evil?
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 377
Book 7
Allegory
I said, here they
have been since childhood … legs and necks chained so they cannot move … above
and behind them a fire blazing … like ourselves … they see only their own
shadows, or the shadows of one another …
He said: how could
the see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their
heads?
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 388
At first, when any of
them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round
and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will
distress him…
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 388
But then if I am
right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they
can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before… and capacity of
learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to
turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of
knowledge can only be the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world
of becoming into that of being and learn by degrees to endure the sight of
being and of the brightest and best of being or in other words of the good.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 390
I mean that they
remain in the upper world; but this must not be allowed; they must be made to
descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labours and
honours, whether they are worth having or not.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 390
… the turning round
of a soul passing from … ascent from below, which we affirm to be true
philosophy … And should we not enquire what sort of knowledge has the power of
effecting such a change?
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 391
A something which all
arts and sciences and intelligences use in common and which everyone first has
to learn among the elements of education: numbers and calculation.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 392
…arithmetic has a
very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract
number and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects
into the argument.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 393
…those that have a
natural talent for calculation are generally quick at every other kind of
knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training,
although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker
than they otherwise would have been.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 394
… geometry will draw
the soul towards truth and create the spirit of philosophy.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 394
After plane geometry,
I said, we proceeded at once to solids in revolution [he’s talking about
astronomy]
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 395
I have hardly every
known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 397
Further, he of whom
we are in search should have a good memory, and be an unwearied solid man who
is a lover of labour in any line; or he will never be able to endure the great
amount of bodily exercise and to go through all the intellectual discipline and
study which we require of him.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 398
Do you remember that
the children, too, were to be taken to see the battle on horseback; and that if
there were no danger they were to be brought close up and, like young hounds,
have a taste of blood given them?
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 399
The same practice may
be followed, I said, in all these things – labours lessons, dangers – and he
who is most at home in all of them ought to be enrolled in a select number.
At what age?
At the age when the
necessary gymnastics are over: the period whether of two or three years which
passes in this sort of training is useless for any other purpose; … After that
time those who are selected from the class of twenty years old will be promoted
to higher honour, and the sciences which they learned without any order in
their early education will now be brought together, and they will be able to
see the natural relationship of them to one another to true being.
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 399
… you know that there
are certain principles about justice and honour, which were taught us in
childhood, and under their parental authority we have been brought up obeying
and honouring them
Plato, The Dialogues
of Plato, The Republic, Great Books Volume 7, pg. 400
Vocabulary
Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, The
Republic
Great Books Volume 7
Great Books Volume 7
Illiberality, pg. 374
–
lacking of liberal
education or training, without culture, narrow minded, miserly-stinginess
Arrant pg. 376
Out and out
unmitigated, notorious, as an arrant fool.
Unmitigated – not
lessened or eased, unmitigated suffering; clear and absolute, as unmitigated
villain
Rogue, pg. 376
Formerly a vagabond,
a scoundrel, a fun-loving, mischievous person, an animal that wanders apart
from the heard and is fierce and wild, to cheat, to lie or act like a rogue.
Ignorble, pg. 386
One who ignores (new
ideas, thoughts, concepts)
Ignore – to disregard
deliberately, pay no attention to, refuse to consider
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