Quotes by Philosopher

The beginning, as the proverb says, is half the whole.

Nature always has something amazing in it.

If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.

Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.

Quite often good things have hurtful consequences. There are instances of men who have been ruined by their money or killed by their courage.

In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.

Most men appear to think that the art of despotic government is statesmanship, and what men affirm to be unjust and inexpedient in their own case they are not ashamed of practicing towards others; they demand just rule for themselves, but where other men are concerned they care nothing about it. Such behavior is irrational; unless the one party is, and the other is not, born to serve, in which case men have a right to command, not indeed all their fellows, but only those who are intended to be subjects; just as we ought not to hunt mankind, whether for food or sacrifice . .

The body is most fully developed from thirty to thirty-five years of age, the mind at about forty-nine.