57
" However this may be, it can hardly be doubted that with Justinian’s persecution of non-Christians, heretics, and philosophers (A.D. 529), the dark ages began. The Church followed in the wake of Platonic-Aristotelian totalitarianism, a development that culminated in the Inquisition. The theory of the Inquisition, more especially, can be described as purely Platonic. It is set out in the last three books of the Laws, where Plato shows that it is the duty of the shepherd rulers to protect their sheep at all costs by preserving the rigidity of the laws and especially of religious practice and theory, even if they have to kill the wolf, who may admittedly be an honest and honourable man whose diseased conscience unfortunately does not permit him to bow to the threats of the mighty. "
― Karl Popper , The Open Society and Its Enemies
60
" With Hegel’s remark quoted here (cp. § 35) that the slave is the man who prefers life to freedom, compare Plato’s remark (Republic, 387a) that free men are those who fear slavery more than death. In a sense, this is true enough; those who are not prepared to fight for their freedom will lose it. But the theory which is implied by both Plato and Hegel, and which is very popular with later authors also, is that men who give in to superior force, or who do not die rather than give in to an armed gangster, are, by nature, ‘born slaves’ who do not deserve to fare better. This theory, I assert, can be held only by the most violent enemies of civilization. "
― Karl Popper , The Open Society and Its Enemies