“Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.Socrates: How so, Plato?Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is asculptor.Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they haveno need to be reminded.Plato: That is correct.Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.”

“Plato is widely believed to have been a student of Socrates and to have been deeply influenced by his teacher's unjust death. Plato's brilliance as a writer and thinker can be witnessed by reading his Socratic dialogues. Some of the dialogues, letters, and other works that are ascribed to him are considered spurious”

“Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.”

“We have no way of knowing, of course, why some are born in health and affluence, while others enter broken bodies or broken homes, or emerge into a realm of war or hunger. So we cannot give definite meaning to our place in the world, or to our neighbor's. But Plato's reflections should give us pause and invite both humility and hope. Humility, because if we chose our lot in life, there is every reason to suspect merit, and not disfavor, is behind disadvantaged birth. A blighted life may have been the more courageous choice--at least it was for Plato... So how can we feel pride in our own blessedness, or condescension in another's misfortune? And Plato's reflections should give us hope, because his myth reminds us that suffering can be sanctifying, that pain is not punishment ,and that the path to virtue is fraught with opposition.”

“I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.”

“No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.”