Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Laws against certain sexual relationships are caused by corrupt rulers and fearful citizens.
In plain terms
Unfair laws come from bad leaders and scared people.
What can you take from it?
Recognize that some moral laws may serve political ends.

Where it applies

  • legislative debate
  • social critique
  • history

Putting it to work

  • question legal origins
  • assess political motives

Questions to consider

  • Who benefits from these laws?
  • Is morality ever neutral?

Another view

This claim attributes all such laws to malice and fear.

More from Plato

  1. There is only one good, which is knowledge, and one evil, which is ignorance.

    Permalink to quote #59
  2. The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared to that of which we are ignorant.

    Permalink to quote #61
  3. I shall assume that your silence gives consent (XLI).

    Permalink to quote #58

Related quotes

  1. 'I mean, we haven't seen many people, but I know they're up ahead, and whenever there's a Tower involved, there's a man. You wait for the man because you gotta…

    Stephen KingStephen King quote #99
  2. [His reply to the chairman's other stock question, which had previously never failed to embarrass the claimant: 'Tell me, Mr. Strachey, what would you do if yo…

    Lytton StracheyLytton Strachey quote #1
  3. The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

    Max BeerbohmMax Beerbohm quote #1