Quotes by Subject:

Government

A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. - Plato.

Democracy...is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. - Plato.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments. - Plato.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. - Plato.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions. - Plato.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens. - Plato.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government. – Socrates.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern. - Plato.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. - Plato.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class. - Plato.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters. - Plato.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty. – Aristotle.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law. – Aristotle.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men. - Plato.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands. - Plato.