favorite quotes

[smakpopy]

One of my favorite quotes is this from milton:

For Spirits, when they please,
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure,
Not tried or manacled with joint or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their airy purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil.

And from the republic:

Which is the more profitable, to
be just and act justly and practise virtue, whether seen or unseen
of gods and men, or to be unjust and act unjustly, if only unpunished
and unreformed?

among many others, i may add to this thread later

[Leanne]

Milton is one of my favourites as well, though I tend to most adore his sonnets -- that's from Paradise Lost isn't it?

I have terrible trouble picking quotes out of poems as I tend to forget the exact words and just take on the gist of them, but a few stand out. For philosophical sentiments, I find it hard to go past Robert Burns' "A Man's A Man":

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

[smakpopy]

Here is an argument in the republic on the virtues of injustice:

Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower
which may he a fortress to me all my days? For what men say is that,
if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none,
but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if,
though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life
is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes
over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself.
I will describe around me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the
vestibule and exterior of my house; behind I will trail the subtle
and crafty fox, as Archilochus, greatest of sages, recommends. But
I hear some one exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness is often
difficult; to which I answer, Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless,
the argument indicates this, if we would be happy, to be the path
along which we should proceed. With a view to concealment we will
establish secret brotherhoods and political clubs. And there are professors
of rhetoric who teach the art of persuading courts and assemblies;
and so, partly by persuasion and partly by force, I shall make unlawful
gains and not be punished.

And again on mans nature:

my meaning will be most clearly seen
if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the criminal
is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those who refuse to do
injustice are the most miserable --that is to say tyranny, which by
fraud and force takes away the property of others, not little by little
but wholesale; comprehending in one, things sacred as well as profane,
private and public; for which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating
any one of them singly, he would be punished and incur great disgrace
--they who do such wrong in particular cases are called robbers of
temples, and man-stealers and burglars and swindlers and thieves.
But when a man besides taking away the money of the citizens has made
slaves of them, then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termed
happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of
his having achieved the consummation of injustice. For mankind censure
injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because
they shrink from committing it.

And one of the arguments against it:

the just are clearly
wiser and better and abler than the unjust, and that the unjust are
incapable of common action; nay ing at more, that to speak as we did
of men who are evil acting at any time vigorously together, is not
strictly true, for if they had been perfectly evil, they would have
laid hands upon one another; but it is evident that there must have
been some remnant of justice in them, which enabled them to combine;
if there had not been they would have injured one another as well
as their victims; they were but half --villains in their enterprises;
for had they been whole villains, and utterly unjust, they would have
been utterly incapable of action.

A quote about the virtues of being caught red handed so to speak, and corrected:

He who is undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and
punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized;
the gentler element in him is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected
and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom,
more than the body ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength
and health, in proportion as the soul is more honourable than the
body.

There is also a tale told near the end of the republic about the afterlife, it begins like this and is quite long so if you search for it you can read it all:

I will tell you a tale; not one of the tales which Odysseus
tells to the hero Alcinous

And here is a proposed way to educate soldiers in the army of the state they are creating in their minds:

I will speak, although I really know not how to look you
in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which
I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the
soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told that their
youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received
from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they
were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves
and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were
completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country
being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise
for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens
they are to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers.

[rowens]

Why do you like these quotes from Plato, specifically? I was just interested.

[smakpopy]

Why do you like these quotes from Plato, specifically? I was just interested.

The republic begins with a debate on the nature of justice, what is good and evil, virtuous and sinful, and over time the speakers in the dialogue explore the topic from as many different angles as they can, regardless of whether or not they believe in injustice, as most speaking claim to not.

They explore the topic in an individual, and in a state, and in order do do so they describe settings for the hypothetical characters.

In the end they create the framework for what they believe is a good, just state or "nation", and one comes away with the feeling that doing good is preferable to doing evil.

These are just a few snapshots of some of the more profound statements.

And its not exactly that i like them, its that they are timeless, and can be applied to some of the actors on the world stage of today.

The only problem with plato and aristotle is that they tended to mix both science, logic, and religion in some ways, what many held as truth then would not hold water today.

[rowens]

I never liked Plato very much. He's good, but it doesn't appeal to me. I'm a villain in philosophy. Where others would want a Republic, or a Utopia, I'm the Mad Max that wanders around content to have no part of it, but interested in helping to tear it all down when it reaches its obvious ironies that Plato was aware of.

[billy]

is that a quote or an excerpt

One of my favorite quotes is this from milton:

For Spirits, when they please,
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure,
Not tried or manacled with joint or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their airy purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil.

And from the republic:

Which is the more profitable, to
be just and act justly and practise virtue, whether seen or unseen
of gods and men, or to be unjust and act unjustly, if only unpunished
and unreformed?

among many others, i may add to this thread later

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
from Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'success' although the poem is attributed to Emerson, it is believed to have been originally written by Bessie A. Stanley
later than the date of Emerson's death still, the quote and the poem or exceptional.

[smakpopy]

is that a quote or an excerpt

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
from Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'success' although the poem is attributed to Emerson, it is believed to have been originally written by Bessie A. Stanley
later than the date of Emerson's death still, the quote and the poem or exceptional.

The poem is so long, hundreds of pages, that i would call it a quote.

It pops up somewhere during the description of the different angels among lucifers fallen army.

There is alot of good imagery in the work.

I think it would make an amazing movie, alot better than the 10 commandments.

If it was not so tied in with religion, i would expect it to be required reading in public school.

[rowens]

"You can't kill a man's soul (only he can do that). You can kill a man's body. You can cut him up and eat him....But you'll choke on his soul...You will choke on his soul!"---Robert Blake to Tavis Smiley

[PeaceGirl Wilkins]

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds."
-Bob Marley

"Unfortunately,everything is about love; so, do it well."
-Me

"You ain't shit and I'm scared it rubbed off on me."
-J. Cole

"Here's To The Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones who do!"
-Steve Jobs

"Humans are not like fruit. You can't just eat the inside and through the peel away."
- forgot who exactly but it came from the play "The Death of A Salesman" ---I may not have written it word for word either.

[rowens]

"We were just gonna throw toilet paper at her house. We didn't plan on TPing it."
--my sister