The Just City

You might be able to imagine what it is like to fall asleep in a prison cell and awake to find yourself in an experimental colony which one of your pupils claimed you had proposed yourself. I thought at first that it was a ridiculous dream, but as it keeps going on and becoming more and more detailed I have decided for the time being to treat it as reality and go along with it on that basis.

A young lady from Queen Victoria’s England does not expect to have her prayers answered, or at least not in such a direct and immediate way, and certainly not by Pallas Athene.

Plato’s Republic was extremely specific on some issues and distressingly vague on others. It wasn’t really intended to be used as a blueprint.

The river Lethe is full of brilliantly colored fish. Nobody ever mentions that when they talk about it. I suppose they forget them as soon as they see them, and so they are a surprise at the end and the beginning of each mortal life.

These numbers weren’t in the Republic. They had some complicated Neoplatonist relevance, and had doubtless taken somebody a long time to work out. I was so glad I’d missed that discussion

Bringing together that many children with so few adults was something only somebody who knew nothing about children would have suggested.

She [Artemis] hasn’t forgiven me for the moon missions being called the Apollo Program when they should have been called after her.

I hate those Socratic dialogues where everything gets drawn out at the pace of an excessively logical snail.