Quotes from plato; brief connection to running.

Some quote from "the republic"

- "then he must take the longer way around, and must work as hard at his intellectual training as at his physical; otherwise, as we've just said, he will never finally reach the highest form of knowledge, which should be peculiarly his own"
- "and you know of course that most ordinary people think that pleasure is the good, while the more sophisticated think it is knowledge"
- "the good, then, is the end of all endeavour, the object on which every heart is set, whose existence it divines, though it finds it difficult to grasp just what it isl and because it can't handle it with the same assurance as other things it misses any value those other things have"
- "tell about the child and you can owe us your account of the parent"
- "the sun is not sight itself, it is the cause of sight, and us seen by the sight it causes"
- "when the mind's eye is fixed on on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understand and knows them, and its possession of intelligence is evident; but when it is fixed on the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its opinions shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence"
- "what gives the objects of knowledge their truth and the knower's mind the power of knowing is the for of the good. it is the cause of knowledge and truth"
- "just as it was right to think of light ad sight as being like the sun, it is right to think of knowledge and truth as being like the good, but still wrong to think of them as being 'the good', whose position must be ranked higher still"
- "the good therefore may be said to be the source not only of intelligibility of the objects knowledge, but also of their bing and reality; yet it is not itself that reality, but is beyond it, and superior to it in dignity and power"
- "there are four states of mind; the top being intelligence, the second reason, the third belief, and the fourth illusion. And you may arrange them in a scale, and assume they have degrees of clarity corresponding to the degree of truth possessed by their subject matter"
- "if he went back to sit in his old seat in the cave, his eyes would be blinded by darkness, because he had come in suddenly out of the sunlight"
- "the realm revealed by sight corresponds to the prison, and the light of the fire in the prison to the power of the sun"


The simile of the sun states that the light of the sun gives light to our world in the same way that 'the good' gives light to our knowledge. (very rather simplistic paraphrasing). Plato often speaks about a necessity to maintain a balance of body, mind, and soul. I feel like doing this leads you closer to an understanding of the good. When you run a race, it feels like the crux upon which you are able to stand which makes understanding the power of the good more possible. I like that feeling, of being such that I have an understanding of 'the good' no matter how fleeting that moment may be.