I came here to do a job, and my job is to hurt people.
It is an essential feature of the just state that the wealthy be kept away from political power and that the politically powerful be kept away from wealth.
Everyone loves a hero. What we differ on is the question of who the heroes are, because we differ over what matters. And who matters is a function of what matters. [If] what matters is intelligence, the people who matter are the intelligent, and the people who matter the most, the heroes, are the geniuses.
Those who share my heroes are, in the deepest sense, of my own kind.
To matter, to mind. . . . What we mind is in our power, but whether we matter may not be - and there's the tragedy. . . . Can anyone truthfully say, I don't matter and I don't mind?
Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.
Mother' is not an identity one can just try on for size.
There is more to life than just existing and having a pleasant time.
In the beginning I looked around and, not finding the automobile of my dreams, decided to build it myself.
Perfect friendship puts us under the necessity of being virtuous. As it can only be preserved among estimable persons, it forces us to resemble them. You find in friendship the surety of good counsel, the emulation of good example, sympathy in our griefs, succor in our distress.
You have to adhere to a certain morality, a certain level of decorum, or else you'll be punished and labeled.