Famous Quotes & Sayings

Julian Baggini

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

Edward Gibbon

The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.

Edward Gibbon

The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind.

Dick Costolo

People have Plato's form in their mind of what a leader is, or what a C.E.O. is, and it is a bunch of elements that I really don't conform to at all. I've given this a lot of thought, and I came to the conclusion that I don't care.

Elizabeth Kostova

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

Benjamin Jowett

Plato's dialogues bear at least some similarities to the classical plays.

C. S. Lewis

The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

Bill Maher

I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing: while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them, and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts. And what's more, you would've hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris and thought the Bible was mostly bulls**t.

Denis Diderot

At an early age I sucked up the milk of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato and Euripides, diluted with that of Moses and the prophets.

Alan Bullock

Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work.

Alan Blinder

Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

Al Smith

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

David McCullough

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

David Korten

We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.

David Korten

Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.

C. Wright Mills

Here's to the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published and widely distributed in the Soviet Union. On that day the USSR will have achieved democracy!

Carl Icahn

Im a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

Ai Weiwei

Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.

Arabella Weir

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.

William Floyd

Have any of our friends got off the Island with their families, or what must they submit to? Despotism or destruction, I fear, is their fate.

Alexander Hamilton

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

To begin with unlimited freedom is to end with unlimited despotism.

Mike Crapo

Throwing off despotism and tyranny is our history and part of our national identity - something in which we can take incredible pride.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

No despotism is so formidable as that of a religion or a scientific system.

Lajos Kossuth

Fear must rule in a despotism.

Max Stirner

Every State is a despotism, be the despot one or many.