The Republic
Important Quotations Explained
1. The result, then,
is that more plentiful and better-quality goods are more easily
produced if each person does one thing for which he is naturally
suited, does it at the right time, and is released from having to
do any of the others.
2. What about someone
who believes in beautiful things but doesn’t believe in the beautiful
itself and isn’t able to follow anyone who could lead him to the
knowledge of it? Don’t you think he is living in a dream rather
than a wakened state? Isn’t this dreaming: whether asleep or awake,
to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing
itself that it is like?
3. They don’t
understand that a true captain must pay attention to the seasons
of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds, and all that pertains
to his craft, if he’s really to be the ruler of a ship. And they
don’t believe that there is any craft that would enable him to determine
how he should steer the ship, whether the others want him to or
not, or any possibility of mastering this alleged craft or of practicing
it at the same time as the craft of navigation. Don’t you think that
the true captain will be called a real stargazer, a babbler, and
a good-for-nothing by those who sail in ships governed in that way?
4. Once one has
seen it, however, one must conclude that it is the cause of all
that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both
light and its source in the visible realm, and that in the intelligible
realm it controls and provides truth and understanding, so that
anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it.
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