The Republic Education Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Stephanus pagination (the standardized way in which every text of Plato is divided). Every edition and translation will have this pagination in the margins.

Quote #7

"If... we use women for the same things as the men, they must also be taught the same things." (451e)

Socrates is all about equal education for women: same expectations = same education. Too bad it took more than two millennia for most other people to figure this out, right?

Quote #8

"....they'll lead all the hardy children to...war, so that... they can see what they'll have to do in their craft when they are grown up." (466e-467a)

This aspect of education in the Republic seems pretty suspect... taking children to witness the violence of warfare does not seem like a great educational practice. Speaking of which, what's up with war in the Republic? Isn't it a little strange that Socrates never really questions it here? He questions everything else, after all.

Quote #9

"Well, then, I suppose that if the nature we set down for the philosopher chances on a suitable course of learning, it will necessarily grow and come to every kind of virtue; but if it isn't sown, planted, and nourished in what's suitable, it will come to all the opposite..." (492a)

Using some nifty agricultural imagery here, Socrates explains that education can really make all the difference between virtue and its opposite. The connection between education and agriculture is actually an old one: our words for "culture" and "cultivation" come from the same root.