Question 1

What is the best book to start with?

Accepted Answer

Republic VI–VII, the cave and the remarks on education that follow it. You see a single extended image doing philosophical work, and you can watch what happens if it is cropped into a caption.

Question 2

What is the most famous quote?

Accepted Answer

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Plato that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “Until philosophers rule as kings, or those now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, cities will have no rest from evils.” (Plato, Republic 473c–d, Paraphrase or translation).

Question 3

What is the most misquoted line?

Accepted Answer

The library marks this as Misattributed: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” There is no such sentence in the dialogues. A close form, 'Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle', is associated with Ian Maclaren in the 1890s. Plato's name was added because kindness-plus-antiquity sounds Platonic. It is not.

Question 4

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

Accepted Answer

Forms: The dialogues often argue that the things we can know stably are not the changing objects of the senses.