Q0321

Plato

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Unless…either philosophers rule in the cities or those now called kings…philosophize genuinely and adequately…
Thinker Plato
School Platonism
Source Republic V 473c–d
Theme Wisdom
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Republic V 473c–d, within the tradition of Platonism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of wisdom, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Plato's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Plato. (n.d.). Unless…either philosophers rule in the cities or those now called kings…philosophize genuinely and adequately… In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0321

MLA: Plato. “Unless…either philosophers rule in the cities or those….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0321.

Chicago: Plato. “Unless…either philosophers rule in the cities or those….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0321.

Same thinker

More from Plato

  1. Justice is doing one's own work and not meddling in others'.
  2. Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
  3. Let us not become haters of argument — that is a great danger to the soul.
  4. Extreme freedom seems to change into nothing but extreme slavery.
  5. Picture human beings as if living in an underground, cave-like dwelling.

All quotations by Plato

Same theme

More on wisdom

  1. The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
  2. What I do not know, I do not claim to know.
  3. Let us not become haters of argument — that is a great danger to the soul.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.

Browse the wisdom theme