To suffer is better than to do evil; and the art of rhetoric is described as only useful for the purpose of self-accusation.
the Complete Works Of Platoby plato
As the Pre-Socratic philosopher failed to distinguish between the universal and the true, while he placed the particulars of sense under the false and apparent, so appears to identify negation with falsehood, or is unable to distinguish them. The greatest service rendered by him to mental science is the recognition of the communion of classes, which, although based by him on his account of ‘Not-being,’ is independent of it.
falsehood / philosopher / science / true / universal
Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion.
The great enemy of is the world, not exactly in the theological sense, yet in one not wholly different – the world as the hater of truth and lover of appearance, occupied in the pursuit of gain and pleasure rather than of knowledge, banded together against the few good and wise men, and devoid of true education.
appearance / education / knowledge / truth / World
To refer a subject to a negative class is unmeaning, unless the ‘not’ is a mere modification of the positive, as in the example of ‘not honourable’ and ‘dishonourable’; or unless the class is characterized by the absence rather than the presence of a particular quality.
Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of ‘s in which the falsehood of all mankind is reflected.
falsehood / mythology / philosophy / rhetoric / Sophist
Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth.
The not- beautiful is as real as the beautiful, the not-just as the just. And the essence of the not-beautiful is to be separated from and opposed to a certain kind of existence which is termed beautiful. And this opposition and negation is the not-being of which we are in search, and is one kind of being.
If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes.
The physician of the soul is aware that his patient will receive no nourishment unless he has been cleaned out; and the soul of the Great King himself, if he has not undergone this purification, is unclean and impure.