Quotes About Enlightenment

How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

He whom loves touches not walks in darkness.

Knowledge is the food of the soul.

Philosophy is the highest music.

It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.

And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

I am smart because I know I nothing.

Beauty is the splendor of truth. (Die Schönheit ist der Glanz der Wahrheit)

I must go beyond the dark world of sense information to the clear brilliance of the sunlight of the outside world. Once done, it becomes my duty to go back to the cave in order to illuminate the minds of those imprisoned in the 'darkness' of sensory knowledge.

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.

In the knowledgeable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty. 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.

He said: Who then are the true philosophers? Those, I said, who are lovers of the vision of truth. That is also good, he said; but I should like to know what you mean? To

True, how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

quiénes son entonces -preguntó- los que llamas filósofos verdaderos? -Los que gustan de contemplar la verdad -respondí.

SOCRATES: But I think that finally he would be in the condition to look at the sun itself, not just at its reflection whether in water or wherever else it might appear, but at the sun itself, as it is in and of itself and in the place proper to it and to contemplate of what sort it is.

Sinceramente? Èpico.

not to be learned; for all knowledge appears

International

There neither is nor ever will be a treatise of mine on the subject. For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy is when men are afraid of the light

Los que gustan de contemplar la verdad

No estoy distante de definir la sabiduría como el conocimiento de sí mismo, y de hecho soy de la misma opinión del que colocó en el templo de Delfos una inscripción de este género: «Conócete a ti mismo».