Date: 380-360 B.C.

"'All of you in the city are certainly brothers,' we shall say to them in telling the tale, 'but god, in fashioning those of you who are competent to rule, mixed gold in at their birth; this is why they are most honored; in auxiliaries, silver, and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsm...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"[T]here is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by such studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes, for by it only is reality beheld."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"Hence the god commands the rulers first and foremost to be of nothing such good guardians and to keep over nothing so careful a watch as the children, seeing which of these metals is mixed in their souls."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"The body is held together at a certain tension between the extremes of hot and cold, and dry and wet, and so on, and our soul is a temperament or adjustment of these same extremes, when they are combined in just the right proportion."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 370-300 B.C.

"So too when you state the next point in your argument, that those who train their bodies but neglect their souls are guilty of another action of the same sort--neglecting the part that should rule, and attending to that which should be ruled."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 370-300 B.C.

"Moreover, the conclusion of this argument of yours is a fine one,--how that for every man who knows not how to make use of his soul it is better to have his soul at rest and not to live, than to live acting according to his own caprice; but if it is necessary for him to live, it is better after ...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"The soul through all her being is immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal; but that which moves another and is moved by another, in ceasing to move ceases also to live."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"Let the soul be compared to a pair of winged horses and charioteer joined in natural union."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"The soul in her totality has the care of inanimate being everywhere, and traverses the whole heaven in divers forms appearing;--when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and orders the whole world; whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings and drooping in her flight at last settles on t...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)