Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Plato, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Plato quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 1091 Plato quotes for you to read and share.
Never discourage anyone ... who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. -- Plato
Nothing ever is, everything is becoming. -- Plato
Seek truth while you are young, for if you do not, it will later escape your grasp -- Plato
The purpose of education is to give to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable. -- Plato
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter. -- Plato
What a handsome face he had: but if he were naked you would forget he had a face, he is so beautiful in every way. -- Plato
Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any. -- Plato
For though a man should be a complete unbeliever in the being of gods; if he also has a native uprightness of temper, such persons will detest evil in men; their repugnance to wrong disinclines them to commit wrongful acts; they shun the unrighteous and are drawn to the upright. -- Plato
I must yield to you, for you are irresistible. -- Plato
And if we only have a guardian who has this knowledge our State will be perfectly ordered? Of course, he replied; but I wish that you would tell me whether you conceive this supreme principle of the good to be knowledge or pleasure, or different from either? Aye, -- Plato
For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy. -- Plato
To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat. -- Plato
Men of Athens, I honor and I love you, but I will obey the god rather than you and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet. -- Plato
I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia - by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best.
(tr Jowett) -- Plato
Of course, he said, he who is of a certain nature, is like those who are
of a certain nature; he who is not, not. -- Plato
For philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. -- Plato
But I don't think we shall quarrel about a word - the subject of our inquiry is too important for that. -- Plato
What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error to the truth, that climb up into the real world which we shall call true philosophy. -- Plato
Ideas are the source of all things -- Plato
A measure of such things which in any degree falls short of the whole truth is not fair measure; for nothing imperfect is the measure of anything, although persons are too apt to be contented and think that they need search no further. -- Plato
The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity. -- Plato
Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy ... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times. -- Plato
As long as I draw breath and am able, I won't give up practicing philosophy. -- Plato
The champion of justice [ ... ] would be as a man who has fallen among wild beasts, unwilling to share their misdeeds, and unable to hold out singly against the savagery of all. -- Plato
For I am certain, O men of Athens, that if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago and done no good either to you or to myself. -- Plato
Time is the moving image of eternity. -- Plato
When [a man] thinks that he is reasoning he is really disputing, just because he cannot define and divide, and so know that of which he is speaking; and he will pursue a merely verbal opposition in the spirit of contention and not of fair discussion. -- Plato
How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? -- Plato
I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true. -- Plato
As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him. -- Plato
There can be no fairer spectacle than that of a man, who combines the possession of moral beauty in his soul with outward beauty of form, corresponding and harmonizing with the former, because the same great pattern enters both. -- Plato
Let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly. -- Plato
O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him. -- Plato
There are some who are naturally fitted for philosophy and political leadership, while the rest should follow their lead and let philosophy alone. -- Plato
Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. -- Plato
My opinion is: Truth must be absolute and that you Mr. Protagoras, are absolutely in error. Since this is indeed my opinion, then you must concede that it is true according to your philosophy. -- Plato
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. -- Plato
For our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives. -- Plato
Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this. -- Plato
In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill ... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one. -- Plato
Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them. -- Plato
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. -- Plato
For the object of education is to teach us to love beauty. -- Plato
Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love. -- Plato
Philosophy is the highest music. -- Plato
All learning is in the learner, not the teacher. -- Plato
Haven't you noticed that opinion without knowledge is always a poor thing? At the best it is blind - isn't anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding like a blind man on the right road? -- Plato
If a painter, then, paints a picture of an ideally beautiful man, complete to the last detail, is he any the worse painter because he cannot show that such a man could really exist? -- Plato
Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. -- Plato
The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death. -- Plato
One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
There is a ... matter - much more valuable and divine than natural philosophy ... On this matter I must speak to you in enigmas. -- Plato
There is a constant suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant anxiety about the state of his body. -- Plato
Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy. -- Plato
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul. -- Plato
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. -- Plato
God is a geometrician. -- Plato
Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of Plato's in which the falsehood of all mankind is reflected. -- Plato
Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service. -- Plato
There is no other start to philosophy but wonder. -- Plato
If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it. -- Plato
I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning -- Plato
When a man is out of his depth, whether he has fallen into a little swimming-bath or into mid-ocean, he has to swim all the same. -- Plato
One should turn towards the main ocean of the-beautiful-in-the-world so that one may by, contemplation of this Form, bring forth in all their splendor many fair fruits of discourse and meditation in a plenteous crop of philosophy. -- Plato
Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies? -- Plato
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands. -- Plato
Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them. -- Plato
Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world. -- Plato
[T]hose who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men. -- Plato
Reality is created by the mind. We can change our reality by changing our mind. -- Plato
Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell. -- Plato
Cunning ... is but the low mimic of wisdom. -- Plato
The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. -- Plato
We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing ... -- Plato
Time is the moving imago of the unmoving eternity. -- Plato
If a man says that it is right to give every one his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one. -- Plato
Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away ... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him. -- Plato
Either death is a state of nothingness and utter consciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night. -- Plato
He who advises a sick man, whose manner of life is prejudicial to health, is clearly bound first of all to change his patient's manner of life. -- Plato
Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong ... And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe. -- Plato
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails. -- Plato
We must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things. -- Plato
If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake. -- Plato
Conversion is not implanting eyes, for they exist already; but giving them a right direction, which they have not -- Plato
The true runner comes to the finish and receives the prize and is crowned. -- Plato
Man is a being in search of meaning. -- Plato
Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants. -- Plato
Music is that which takes silence and brings it to life. -- Plato
The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings -- Plato
You're my Star, a stargazer too,
and I wish that I were Heaven,
with a billion eyes to look at you! -- Plato
Time on its back bears all things far away - Full many a challenge is wrought by many a day - Shape, fortune, name, and nature all decay -- Plato
Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. -- Plato
There is no need, however, to be angry at this ambition of theirs
which may be forgiven; for every man ought to be loved who says and manfully pursues and works out anything which is at all like wisdom: at the same time we shall do well to see them as they really are. -- Plato
Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the rational principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily imitated? Clearly. And -- Plato
Thinking is the soul talking to itself. -- Plato
Rather I think that a man who ... is willing ... to value learning as long as he lives, not supposing that old age brings him wisdom of itself, will necessarily pay more attention to the rest of his life. -- Plato
... it's better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just. -- Plato
For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees. -- Plato
To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible. -- Plato
I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long ... arousing and persuading and reproaching ... You will not easily find another like me. -- Plato
To begin is the most important part of any quest and by far the most courageous. -- Plato
Would that I were the heaven, that I might be all full of love-lit eyes to gaze on thee. -- Plato
Do you mean that the tyrant will dare to use violence against the people who fathered him, and raise his hand against them if they oppose him? So the tyrant is a parricide, and little comfort to his old parent. -- Plato
And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves, then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven ... Last of all he will be able to see the sun. -- Plato
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another. -- Plato
In which, if any, of these constitutions do we find the art of ruling being practiced in the actual government of men? What art is more difficult to learn? But what art is more important to us? -- Plato
The man who has no self-respect, on the contrary, will imitate anybody and anything; sounds of nature and cries of animals alike; his whole performance will be imitation of gesture and voice. -- Plato
Rhythm and melody enter into the soul of the well-instructed youth and produce there a certain mental harmony hardly obtainable in any other way. ... thus music, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm. -- Plato
Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest hold upon it -- Plato
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. -- Plato
There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink. -- Plato
Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or anything better than cohesion and unity? -- Plato
The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good. -- Plato
Let early education be a sort of amusement. You will then be better able to find out the natural bent. -- Plato
Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind. -- Plato
Then Prometheus, in his perplexity as to what preservation he could devise, stole from Hephaestus and Athena wisdom in the arts together with fire
since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully used by any
and he handed it there and then as a gift to man. -- Plato
The most beautiful motion is that which accomplishes the greatest results with the least amount of effort. -- Plato
When there is crime in society, there is no justice. -- Plato
Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil. -- Plato
All of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors -- Plato
No man's nature is able to know what is best for the social state of man; or, knowing, always able to do what is best. -- Plato
Socrates: I'm afraid that it might actually be sacrilegious to stand idly by while morality is being denigrated and not try to assist as long as one has breath in one's body and a voice to protest with. -- Plato
Star of my life, to the stars your face is turned;
Would I were the heavens, looking back at you with ten thousand eyes. -- Plato
You cannot go into the same water twice. -- Plato
No one ever dies an atheist ... -- Plato
Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns. -- Plato
For a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind and his intellect is no longer in him. -- Plato
What is honored in a culture gets cultivated there. -- Plato
Kindness which is bestowed on the good is never lost. -- Plato
Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation. -- Plato
The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age. -- Plato
Both poverty and wealth, therefore, have a bad effect on the quality of the work and the workman himself. Wealth and poverty, I answered. One produces luxury and idleness and a passion for novelty, the other meanness and bad workmanship and revolution into the bargain. -- Plato
And when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment ... -- Plato
And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. -- Plato
All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else. -- Plato
What is spoken of the unchanging or intelligible must be certain and true; but what is spoken of the created image can only be probable; being is to becoming what truth is to belief. -- Plato
We may state the question thus: - Imitation imitates the actions of men, whether voluntary or involuntary, on which, as they imagine, a good or bad result has ensued, and they rejoice or sorrow accordingly. Is there anything more? No, there is nothing else. But -- Plato
In one sense it is evident that the art of kingship does include the art of lawmaking. But the political ideal is not full authority for laws but rather full authority for a man who understands the art of kingship and has kingly ability. -- Plato
We should not exercise the body without the joint assistance of the mind; nor exercise the mind without the joint assistance of the body. -- Plato
But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. -- Plato
You may feel irritated at being suddenly awakened when you are caught napping; and you may think that if you were to strike me dead as you easily might, then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you gives you another gadfly. -- Plato
A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality. -- Plato
I take it that our state, having been founded and built up on the right lines, is good in the complete sense of the word. -- Plato
In a democracy only will the freeman of nature design to dwell. -- Plato
Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life. -- Plato
those who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, -- Plato
The disposition of noble dogs is to be gentle with people they know and the opposite with those they don't know ... How, then, can the dog be anything other than a lover of learning since it defines what's its own and what's alien. -- Plato
The race of the guardians must be kept pure. -- Plato
Caring about the happiness of others, we find our own. -- Plato
The greatest privilege of a human life is to become a
midwife to the awakening of the Soul in another person. -- Plato
The doctors will treat those of your citizens whose physical and psychological constitution is good: as for the others, they will leave the unhealthy to die and those whose psychological constitution is incurably warped they will be put to death. -- Plato
Let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible ... For this is the way of happiness. -- Plato
Those who don't know must learn from those who do. -- Plato
Until philosophers hold power, neither states nor individuals will have rest from trouble. -- Plato
The rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know. -- Plato
What do you mean? he asked. Beginning with the State, I replied, would you say that a city which is governed by a tyrant is free or enslaved? No city, he said, can be more completely enslaved. And -- Plato
He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen. -- Plato
That is very high praise, which is given you by faithful witness. -- Plato
He who is only an athlete is too crude, too vulgar, too much a savage. He who is a scholar only is too soft, to effeminate. The ideal citizen is the scholar athlete, the man of thought and the man of action. -- Plato
The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable. -- Plato
Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed. -- Plato
The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of God. -- Plato
Ought the just to injure any one at all? -- Plato
Question - What is justice, stripped of appearances? -- Plato
And Agathon said, It is probable, Socrates, that I knew nothing of what I had said.
And yet spoke you beautifully, Agathon, he said. -- Plato
All men, well interrogated, answer well. -- Plato
Then who is more miserable? One of whom I am about to speak. Who is that? He who is of a tyrannical nature, and instead of leading a private life has been cursed with the further misfortune of being a public tyrant. From -- Plato
It's not from money that excellence comes, but from excellence money and the other things, all of them, come to be good for human beings, whether in private or in public life. -- Plato
No man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city. A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time -- Plato
You don't seem to love money too much. And those who haven't made their own money are usually like you. But those who have made it for themselves are twice as fond of it as those who [c] haven't. -- Plato
What I say is that 'just' or 'right' means nothing but what is in the interest of the stronger party. -- Plato
Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself. -- Plato
When ideas are manipulated for personal ends, for class or group interests, the name for this is sophistry. -- Plato
A man is not learned until he can read, write and swim. -- Plato
Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom. -- Plato
The Graces sought some holy ground,
Whose sight should ever please;
And in their search the soul they found
Of Aristophanes. -- Plato
Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil. -- Plato
All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate. -- Plato
Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls. -- Plato
In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good. -- Plato
Great is the issue at stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one be profited if, under the influence of money or power, he neglect justice and virtue? -- Plato
To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils. -- Plato
And now we go our separate ways, I to die and you to live, which is better God only knows. -- Plato
longest of his works -- Plato
For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them -- Plato
justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger. -- Plato
There is nothing so delightful as the hearing, or the speaking of truth. For this reason, there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive. -- Plato
Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion. -- Plato
To do injustice is the greatest of all evils. -- Plato
He who is a useful keeper of anything is also a better thief. -- Plato
T is by justice that we can authentically measure man's value or his nullity ... the absence of justice is the absence of what makes him a man, -- Plato
He said: Who then are the true philosophers? Those, I said, who are lovers of the vision of truth. That is also good, he said; but I should like to know what you mean? To -- Plato
There you have Socrates' wisdom; [b] he himself isn't willing to teach, but he goes around learning from others and isn't even grateful to them. -- Plato
Books are immortal sons deifying their sires. -- Plato
If the head and the body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul. -- Plato
All thought begins with the recognition that something is out of place. -- Plato
Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways. -- Plato
For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet -- Plato
Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value. -- Plato
Self conquest is the greatest of victories. -- Plato
The passionate are like men standing on their heads, they see all things the wrong way. -- Plato
I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us. -- Plato
The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown. -- Plato
The best stomachs are not those which reject all foods. -- Plato
If we are to keep our flock at the highest pitch of excellence, there should be as many unions of the best of both sexes, and as few of the inferior as possible, and that only the offspring of the better unions should be kept. -- Plato
We must, if we are to be consistent, and if we re to have a real pedigree herd, mate the best of our men with the best of our women as often as possible, and the inferior men with the inferior women as seldom as possible, and keep only the offspring of the best. -- Plato
First, I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense. -- Plato
No attempt of curing the body should be made without curing the soul -- Plato
We ask what is the origin of marriage, and we are told that like the right of property, after many wars and contests, it has gradually arisen out of the selfishness of barbarians. -- Plato
The good are not willing to rule either for the sake of money or of honor. -- Plato
Arrogance is ever accompanied by folly. -- Plato
A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. -- Plato
Adultery is the injury of nature. -- Plato
Maximize the power of the beliefs that strengthen you and neutralize those that weaken you. -- Plato
Simonides, then, after the manner of poets, would seem to have spoken darkly of the nature of justice; for he really meant to say that justice is the giving to each man what is proper to him, and this he termed a debt. That -- Plato
For when there are no words, it is very difficult to recognize the meaning of the harmony and rhythm, or to see any worldly object is imitated by them. -- Plato
Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues. -- Plato
Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds. -- Plato
There should be no element of slavery in learning. Enforced exercise does no harm to the body, but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children's lessons take the form of play. -- Plato
I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict. -- Plato
Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites? I -- Plato
The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves. -- Plato
Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality. -- Plato
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself. -- Plato
I know nothing more worthy of a man's ambition than that his son be the best of men. -- Plato
Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. -- Plato
The laws of democracy remain a dead letter, its freedom is anarchy, its equality the equality of unequals -- Plato
And the first step, as you know, is always what matters most, particularly when we are dealing with those who are young and tender. That is the time when they are taking shape and when any impression we choose to make leaves a permanent mark. -- Plato
Self-love is the source of that ignorant conceit of knowledge which is always doing and never succeeding. -- Plato
Cooking is a form of flattery ... a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping ... -- Plato
How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles, - are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. -- Plato
Crito we owe a rooster to Aesculapius -- Plato
You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. -- Plato
Whence comes war and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lust of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the same and service of the body. -- Plato
For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man. -- Plato
If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful. -- Plato
But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily? -- Plato
No soul willfully does wrong. -- Plato
You may be sure, dear Crito, that inaccurate language is not only in itself a mistake: it implants evil in men's souls. -- Plato
What if the man could see Beauty Itself, pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality, and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine, ... the man becoming in that communion, the friend of God, himself immortal; ... would that be a life to disregard? -- Plato
A dog has the soul of a philosopher. -- Plato
The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch. -- Plato
There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil. -- Plato
Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been. -- Plato
It gives me great pleasure to converse with the aged. They have been over the road that all of us must travel, and know where it is rough and difficult and where it is level and easy. -- Plato
I know too well that these arguments from probabilities are imposters, and unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they are apt to be deceptive. -- Plato
We must now examine whether just people also live better and are happier than unjust ones. I think it's clear already that this is so, but we must look into it further, since the argument concerns no ordinary topic, but the way we ought to live. -- Plato
You ought not to heal the body without the soul, for this is the great error of our day in treating the human body. -- Plato
The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. -- Plato
The evil never attains to any real friendship, either with good or evil. -- Plato
They think that you bear old age more [e] easily not because of the way you live but because you're wealthy, for the wealthy, they say, have many consolations. -- Plato
As there are misanthropists or haters of men, so also are there misologists, or haters of ideas. -- Plato
Fire, air, earth, and water are bodies and therefore solids, and solids are contained in planes, and plane rectilinear figures are made up of triangles. -- Plato
They would be subject to no one, neither to lawful ruler nor to the reign of law, but would be altogether and absolutely free. That is the way they got their tyrants, for either servitude or freedom, when it goes to extremes, is an utter bane, while either in due measure is altogether a boon. -- Plato
Each citizen should play his part in the community according to his individual gifts. -- Plato
A man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life. -- Plato
It is our duty to select the best and most dependable theory that human intelligence can supply, and use it as a raft to ride the seas of life. -- Plato
Beauty is a natural superiority. -- Plato
[The Cretans have] more wit than words. -- Plato
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity -- Plato
Then we got into a labyrinth, and, when we thought we were at the end,
came out again at the beginning, having still to see as much as ever. -- Plato
Life must be lived as play. -- Plato
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods. -- Plato
You take the words in the sense which is most damaging to the argument. -- Plato
Books are immortal sons defying their sires. -- Plato
Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil. -- Plato
No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know. -- Plato
They ought to be gentle to their friends and dangerous to their enemies. -- Plato
Necessity is literally the mother of invention. -- Plato
And what do you say of lovers of wine ... they are glad of any pretext of drinking any wine -- Plato
There is no such thing as a lover's oath. -- Plato
Renouncing the honors at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth ... and to the maximum of power, I exhort all other men to do the same. -- Plato
a human being is the measure of all things. of the things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not. -- Plato
Philosophy begins in wonder." -Plato -- Plato
The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless. -- Plato
He was a wise man who invented God. -- Plato
The power to learn is present in everyone's soul, and the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. -- Plato
I must go beyond the dark world of sense information to the clear brilliance of the sunlight of the outside world. Once done, it becomes my duty to go back to the cave in order to illuminate the minds of those imprisoned in the 'darkness' of sensory knowledge. -- Plato
Music is moral law. It is the essence of order and leads to all that is good, true and beautiful. -- Plato
Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool -- Plato
But what if there are no gods? -- Plato
Where love reigns, there's no need for laws. -- Plato
The perfect state is one where men weep and rejoice over the same things. -- Plato
No one is so cowardly that Love could not inspire him to heroism. -- Plato
I would rather have a good friend than the best cock or quail in the world: I would even go further, and say the best horse or dog. -- Plato
Most people affirm pleasure to be the good, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge. -- Plato
To win over your bad self is the grandest and foremost of victories. -- Plato
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance. -- Plato
Is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship? -- Plato
Is virtue something that can be taught? -- Plato
We are bound to our bodies like an oyster to its shell. -- Plato
Or isn't virtue in tension with wealth, as though each were lying in the scale of a balance, always inclining in opposite directions? -- Plato
...both wealth and concord decline as possessions become pursued and honored. And virtue perishes with them as well. -- Plato
Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction. -- Plato
So then, perhaps there would be more justice in the bigger and it would be easier to observe closely. If you want, first we'll investigate what justice is like in the cities. Then, we'll also go on to consider it in individuals, considering the likeness of the bigger in the idea24 of the littler? -- Plato
It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine. -- Plato
We shall not be properly educated ourselves, nor will the guardians whom we are training, until we can recognise the qualities of discipline, courage, generosity, greatness of mind, and others akin to them, as well as their opposites in all their manifestations. -- Plato
The soul is like a pair of winged horses and a charioteer joined in natural union. -- Plato
Harmony that would fittingly imitate the utterances and accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed [ ... ] confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes -- Plato
Happiness springs from doing good and helping others. -- Plato
The wrong use of a thing is far worse than the non-use. -- Plato
The only real ill-doing is the deprivation of knowledge. -- Plato
The cure of many diseases is unknown to physicians because they are ignorant of the whole ... For the part can never be well unless the whole is well. -- Plato
Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. -- Plato
This then is injustice; and on the other hand when the trader, the auxiliary, and the guardian each do their own business, that is justice, and will make the city just. I agree with you. We -- Plato
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. -- Plato
..they all emulated and admired and were students of Spartan education, could tell their wisdom was of this sort by the brief but memorable remarks they each uttered when they met, writing what is on every man's lips: Know thyself, and Nothing too much. -- Plato
I believe that oligarchy follows next in order. And what manner of government do you term oligarchy? A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it. I -- Plato
The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers. -- Plato
The only thing he ought to consider, if he does anything, is whether he does right or wrong, whether it is what a good man does or a bad man -- Plato
You get to know someone better by playing for an hour than by talking for a year. -- Plato
Only the dead have seen the end of war. -- Plato
They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE) -- Plato
It is not noble to return evil for evil, at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbors. -- Plato
Desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none, or very slight ones. -- Plato
Man ... is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures. -- Plato
To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege. -- Plato
Love is a severe mental disorder. -- Plato
The cause of all sins in every case lies in the person's excessive love of self. -- Plato
Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends. -- Plato
The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things. -- Plato
There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. -- Plato
There can be no doubt that the love of wealth and the spirit of moderation cannot exist together in citizens of the same state to any considerable extent; one or the other will be disregarded. -- Plato
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another. -- Plato
In the world of knowledge, the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with effort. -- Plato
Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length. -- Plato
Your dog is your only philosopher. -- Plato
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince. -- Plato
These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not. -- Plato
For he who would proceed aright ... should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms ... out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another, and that beauty in every form is one and the same. -- Plato
Habit is not unimportant. -- Plato
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence. -- Plato
For he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know. -- Plato
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less. -- Plato
If a man be endowed with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility. -- Plato
[ ... ]make sure you raise your children by having them play in their studies, and don't use force. -- Plato
Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right. -- Plato
Tell me, Socrates, have you got a nurse? Why do you ask such a question, I said, when you ought rather to be answering? Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your nose: she has not even taught you to know the shepherd from the sheep. What makes you say that? I replied. -- Plato
To the degree that I cease to persue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears. -- Plato
States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers. -- Plato
What essence is to generation, that truth is to belief. -- Plato
Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be, but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea. -- Plato
Arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up. -- Plato
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. -- Plato
I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools. -- Plato
Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance. -- Plato
We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection. -- Plato
And as they have nothing but their persons which they can call their own, suits and complaints will have no existence among them; they will be delivered from all those quarrels of which money or children or relations are the occasion. Of course they will. Neither -- Plato
Love is a great spirit. Everything spiritual is in between god and mortal. -- Plato
The qualities which a man seeks in his beloved are those characteristics of his own soul, whether he knows it or not. -- Plato
We understand why children are afraid of darkness ... but why are men afraid of light? -- Plato
Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this [live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth]. -- Plato
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other. -- Plato
What of his beard? Are you not of Homer's opinion, who says Youth is most charming when the beard first appears? -- Plato
Our need will be the real creator. -- Plato
Perfect wisdom has four parts: Wisdom, the principle of doing things aright. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately. -- Plato
The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not because it is a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity. -- Plato
The wolf cares not, how many the sheep be. -- Plato
Good actions can strengthen ourselves and inspire good actions to others. -- Plato
It is easy to forgive children who are afraid of the dark but the real tragedy of life is men who are afraid of the light. -- Plato
At the touch of love, everyone is a poet. -- Plato
First and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered By self is, of all things. the most shameful and objectionable. -- Plato
To begin with the wine jar in learning the potter's art. -- Plato
You ought not attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you attempt to cure the body without the soul. -- Plato
A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognise that the same thing happens to the soul. -- Plato
All well bred men should have mastered the art of singing and dancing. -- Plato
Whenever someone, on seeing something, realizes that that which he now sees wants to be like some other reality but falls short and cannot be like that other since it is inferior, do we agree that one who thinks this must have prior knowledge of that to which he says it is like, but deficiently so? -- Plato
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class. -- Plato
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. -- Plato
To escape from evil we must be made as far as possible like God; and the resemblance consists in becoming just and holy and wise. -- Plato
And a democracy, I suppose, comes into being when the poor, winning the victory, put to death some of the other party, drive out others, and grant the rest of the citizens an equal share in both citizenship and offices. -- Plato
There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them. -- Plato
The man deserved his fate, deny it who can; yes, but the fate did not deserve the man. -- Plato
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. -- Plato
The ultimate design of the Mysteries ... was to lead us back to the principles from which we descended, ... a perfect enjoyment of intellectual [spiritual] good. -- Plato
It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn. -- Plato
Welcome out of the cave, my friend. It's a bit colder out here, but the stars are just beautiful. -- Plato
He who has followed the path of love's initiation in the proper order will on arriving at the end suddenly perceive a marvelous beauty, the source of all our efforts -- Plato
For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. -- Plato
For no man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will. -- Plato
Was not this ... what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom
to know what is known and what is unknown to us? -- Plato
The triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. -- Plato
A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something. -- Plato
Any peace is better than any war -- Plato
And among the other honours and rewards our young men can win for distinguished service in war and in other activities, will be more frequent opportunities to sleep with a woman; this will give us a pretext for ensuring that most of our children are born of that parent. -- Plato
Courage is a kind of salvation. Courage is knowing what not to fear. -- Plato
The true musician is attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre ... for he truly has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged in the Dorian mode. Such a one makes me joyous with the sound of his voice, so eager am I in drinking in his words. -- Plato
The good man is the only excellent musician, because he gives forth a perfect harmony not with a lyre or other instrument but with the whole of his life. -- Plato
Well, you know what happens to lovers: whenever they see a lyre, a garment or anything else that their beloved is accustomed to use, they know the lyre, and the image of the boy to whom it belongs comes into their mind. -- Plato
Surely you don't consider me so inflated with the theater as not even to know that for anyone in his right mind a sensible few are more terrifying than a foolish many. -- Plato
They assembled together and dedicated these as the first-fruits of their love to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims which are on every tongue- 'know thyselP and 'Nothing overmuch.' -- Plato
Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift. -- Plato
I do not live to play, but I play in order that I may live, and return with greater zest to the labors of life. -- Plato
The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge. -- Plato
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -- Plato
The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died. -- Plato
But at three, four, five, and even six years the childish nature will require sports; now is the time to get rid of self-will in him, punishing him, but not so as to disgrace him. -- Plato
A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists. Wherein -- Plato
May not the wolf, as the proverb says, claim a hearing? -- Plato
If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection -- Plato
When I kiss Agathon my soul is on my lips, where it comes, poor thing, hoping to cross over. -- Plato
Wine fills the heart with courage. -- Plato
Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning the gods, to which our poets and reciters will be expected to conform
that God is not the author of all things, but of good only. -- Plato
If, then, the ruler catches anybody beside himself lying in the State, 'Any of the craftsmen, whether he be priest or physician or carpenter,' he will punish him for introducing a practice which is equally subversive and destructive of ship or State. Most -- Plato
A fit of laughter, which has been indulged to excess, almost always produces a violent reaction. -- Plato
Let men of all ranks whether they are successful, or unsuccessful, whether they triumph or not; let them do their duty, and rest satisfied. -- Plato
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune. -- Plato
When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them. -- Plato
It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from asbsolute beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of causality? -- Plato
I have this tattooed on my left side! I love the saying and it's a perfect description of Karma, don't judge/discriminate and don't do to someone what you wouldn't want done to you. -- Plato
He who is not a good servant will not be a good master. -- Plato
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? -- Plato
I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts. -- Plato
Wisest is he who knows what he does not know. -- Plato
The most famous of them all was the overthrow of the island of Atlantis. -- Plato
Love is a serious mental disease. -- Plato
And so, from such early times human beings have had Love for one another inborn in them -- Love, reassembler of our ancient nature, who tries to make one out of two and to heal human nature. -- Plato
When you swear, swear seriously and solemnly, but at the same time with a smile, for a smile is the twin sister of seriousness. -- Plato
Follow your dream as long as you live, do not lessen the time of following desire, for wasting time is an abomination of the spirit. -- Plato
Be kind, because everyone is having a really hard time. -- Plato
and we must endeavour to persuade those who are to be the principal men of our State to go and learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study until they see the nature of numbers with the mind only; -- Plato
Thinking and spoken discourse are the same thing, except that what we call thinking is, precisely, the inward dialogue carried on by the mind with itself without spoken sound. -- Plato
The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless. -- Plato
God ever geometrizes. -- Plato
Repetitions. The Greek is in places very ungrammatical and intractable. -- Plato
Hope,' he says, 'cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey; - hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man. -- Plato
The useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base -- Plato
Grant that I may become beautiful in my soul within, and that all my external possessions may be in harmony with my inner self. May I consider the wise to be rich, and may I have such riches as only a person of self-restraint can bear or endure. -- Plato
Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half. -- Plato
That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is. -- Plato
Man is a biped without feathers. -- Plato
We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise. -- Plato
It was Plato, according to Sosigenes, who set this as a problem for those concerned with these things, through what suppositions of uniform and ordered movements the appearances concerning the movements of the wandering heavenly bodies could be preserved. -- Plato
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding. -- Plato
Justice is useful when money is useless. -- Plato
Be kind. Every person you meet
is fighting a difficult battle. -- Plato
A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books. -- Plato
The civilized East is immeasurably in advance of any savage tribes; the Greeks and Romans have improved upon the East; the Christian nations have been stricter in their views of the marriage relation than any of the ancients. -- Plato
He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse -- Plato
Every unjust man is unjust against his will. -- Plato
Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy. -- Plato
The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so. -- Plato
Who are the true philosophers? Those whose passion is to love the truth. -- Plato
Moderation, which consists in indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance. -- Plato
According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves. -- Plato
Socrates said that, from above, the Earth looks like one of those twelve-patched leathern balls. -- Plato
He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power. -- Plato
[Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato ... He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato] said, Aristotle has kicked us off, just as chickens do their mother after they have been hatched. -- Plato
Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule. -- Plato
The qualities of number appear to lead to the apprehension of truth. -- Plato
Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not? -- Plato
Love is an intermediate state between possession and deprivation. -- Plato
So where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice -- Plato
Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites. -- Plato
A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike! -- Plato
The man who hath music in his soul will be most in love with the loveliest. -- Plato
Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors. -- Plato
... if a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest. -- Plato
By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name. -- Plato
From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life than that men count most happy, the life of victors at Olympia. -- Plato
So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey. -- Plato
States are as the men, they grow out of human characters. -- Plato
But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick? -- Plato
For the plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins. -- Plato
Putting the shoe on the wrong foot. -- Plato
Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men. -- Plato
This and no other is the root from
which a tyrant springs; when he
first appears he is a protector. -- Plato
For the extreme of injustice is to seem to be just when one is not. -- Plato
Behold, he said, the wisdom of Socrates; he refuses to teach himself, and goes about learning of others, to whom he never even says Thank you. -- Plato
Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are free from the grasp, not of one mad master only, but of many. -- Plato
Let nobody speak mischief of anybody. -- Plato
Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed. -- Plato
Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and pursuits are dishonourable and evil. -- Plato
The honour of parents is a fair and noble treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth and honour, and to leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonourable. -- Plato
He feels particularly ashamed if ever he is seen by his lovers to be invovled in something dishonourable. -- Plato
The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams. -- Plato
The greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind, yet the mind and the body are one and should not be treated separately! -- Plato
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions. -- Plato
Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics. -- Plato
Knowledge, do you say it is power? yes most mighty of all powers. -- Plato
Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom -- Plato
The one who learns and learns and doesn't practice is like the one who plows and plows and never plants. -- Plato
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. -- Plato
Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child. -- Plato
The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist ... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings. -- Plato
Is there a perfect world? -- Plato
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals. -- Plato
Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter. Said to have been inscribed above the door of Plato's Academy. -- Plato
The prisoner grows to love his chains. -- Plato
It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death. -- Plato
You ask a question, I said, to which a reply can only be given in a parable. Yes, Socrates; and that is a way of speaking to which you are not at all accustomed, I suppose. -- Plato
For instance, I remember someone asking Sophocles, the poet, whether he was still capable of enjoying a woman. 'Don't talk in that way,' he answered; 'I am only too glad to be free of all that; it is like escaping from bondage to a raging madman. -- Plato
A good education consists in knowing how to sing and dance well. -- Plato
Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell. -- Plato
Nothing could be more important than that the work of a soldier is well done. No tools will make a man a skilled workmen, or master of defense, or be of any use to him who has not learned how to handle them and has never bestowed any attention on them. -- Plato
A drunkard is unprofitable for any kind of good service. -- Plato
The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his sneses, and the mind is no longer in him. -- Plato
I pity you who are my companions, because you think that you are doing something when in reality you are doing nothing. -- Plato
Love is a grave mental illness. -- Plato
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life. -- Plato
There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who, when danger is pressing in, will not acknowledge the divine power. -- Plato
all started at the Temple of Apollo In Delphi. One of his friends approached the oracle with the question: "Is anyone wiser than Socrates?" the answer was "No." Socrates was profoundly puzzled by this episode. He claimed to know -- Plato
All good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates in the soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes. -- Plato
For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates ... in the soul, and overflows from thence, as from the head into the eyes. -- Plato
Ignorance: the root of all evil. -- Plato
There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it? -- Plato
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly. -- Plato
Better to complete a small task well, than to do much imperfectly. -- Plato
The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs. -- Plato
How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who I was - so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth. -- Plato
To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue. -- Plato
Nay, Socrates," said Glaucon, "the measure of listening to such discussions is the whole of life for reasonable men". The Republic, 450c. -- Plato
To speak knowing the truth, among prudent and dear men, about what is greatest and dear, is a thing that is safe and encouraging. But to present arguments at a time when one is in doubt and seeking... is a thing both frightening and slippery. -- Plato
You need some knowledge to recognize knowledge, so where does the first knowledge come from? -- Plato
I will prove by my life that my critics are liars. -- Plato
There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself. -- Plato
What is better adapted than the festive use of wine in the first place to test and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is there cheaper or more innocent? -- Plato
And I think that you must have observed again and again what a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose. -- Plato
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. -- Plato
From all wild beasts, a child is the most difficult to handle. -- Plato
The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage. -- Plato
For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. -- Plato
As the government is, such will be the man. -- Plato
The comprehensive mind is always dialectical. -- Plato
A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him. -- Plato
And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously. -- Plato
No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well. -- Plato
True friendship can exist only between equals. -- Plato
Music then is simply the result of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony. -- Plato
[On the virtuous man] He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself. -- Plato
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. -- Plato
The reason is that they utter these words of theirs not by virtue of a skill, but by a divine power - otherwise, if they knew how to speak well on one topic thanks to a skill, they would know how to speak about every other topic too. -- Plato
For this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. -- Plato
Beauty is the splendour of truth -- Plato
We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it. -- Plato
Much sleep is not required by nature, either for our souls or bodies, or for the action in which they are concerned. -- Plato
The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge, -- Plato
If in a discussion of many matters ... we are not able to give perfectly exact and self-consistent accounts, do not be surprised: rather we would be content if we provide accounts that are second to none in probability. -- Plato
According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty. -- Plato
An hour of play is worth a lifetime of conversation. -- Plato
We've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own ... Then, it turns out that this doing one's own work-provided that it comes to be in a certain way-is justice. -- Plato
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death? -- Plato
I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power. -- Plato
If you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his action, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting life a good or a bad man. -- Plato
Must not all things at last be swallowed up in Death? -- Plato
Death is not the worst that can happen to men. -- Plato
Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him? -- Plato
Such, Echecrates, was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man. -- Plato
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety. -- Plato
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory. -- Plato
To do wrong is the greatest of evils. -- Plato
Where reverence is, there is fear; for he who has a feeling of reverence and shame about the commission of any action, fears and is afraid of an ill reputation. -- Plato
anarchy should have no place in the life of man or of the beasts who are subject to man. -- Plato
Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality. -- Plato
To be curious about that which is not one's concern while still in ignorance of oneself is ridiculous. -- Plato
Love is the pursuit of the whole. -- Plato
But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine. If he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal. -- Plato
For, observe that open loves are held to be more honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honourable. -- Plato
Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others. -- Plato
To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way. -- Plato
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. -- Plato
He who love touches walks not in darkness. -- Plato
Each of us, then, is a token of a human, since we've been sliced like a flatfish and made two out of one. So everyone's always searching for his own token. -- Plato
All loves should be simply stepping stones to the love of God. So it was with me; and blessed be his name for his great goodness and mercy. -- Plato
Access to power must be confined to those who are not in love with it. -- Plato
As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves. -- Plato
Neither do the ignorant love wisdom or desire to become wise; for this is the grievous thing about ignorance, that those who are neither good nor beautiful think they are good enough, and do not desire that which they do not think they are lacking. -- Plato
Of all the Gods, Love is the best friend of humankind, the helper and healer of all ills that stand in the way of human happiness. -- Plato
No town can live peacefully whatever its laws when its citizens do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love -- Plato
Does not every man love that which he deems noble and just and good, and hate the opposite of them?people regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust,
about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them. -- Plato
The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful. -- Plato
The truth is that we isolate a particular kind of love and appropriate it for the name of love, which really belongs to a wider whole. -- Plato
Even the Gods love jokes. -- Plato
Every man is a poet when he is in love. -- Plato
The Gods too love a joke. -- Plato
The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful. -- Plato
Love consists in feeling the Sacred One beating inside the loved one. -- Plato
Love' is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete. -- Plato
No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return. -- Plato
The god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it's almost impossible to stamp out. -- Plato
Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil. -- Plato
Health is a consumation of a love affair of all the organs of the body. -- Plato
You must base the Wisdom on Love. -- Plato
Love is a serious mental illness -- Plato
Man is a two-legged animal without feathers. -- Plato
It is right to give every man his due. -- Plato
Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state. -- Plato
...[T]he right way is to give one's attention first to the highest good of the young, just as you expect a good gardener to give his attention first to the young plants, and after that to the others. - Socrates -- Plato
All I would ask you to be thinking of is the truth and not Socrates. -- Plato
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul. -- Plato
The author's Socrates admonishes paramount awareness human limitations. If we do good to those we evaluate as good and evil to those we evaluate at the evil, and we are wrong, we have been made the world less just. -- Plato
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. -- Plato
But then, I said, speaking the truth and paying your debts is not a correct definition of justice. Quite correct, Socrates, if Simonides is to be believed, said Polemarchus interposing. I -- Plato
Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good? -- Plato
Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger. -- Plato
Democracy ... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. -- Plato
Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish. -- Plato
A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot. -- Plato
One cannot make a slave of a free person, for a free person is free even in a prison. -- Plato
God is truth and light his shadow. -- Plato
Thus does the Muse herself move men divinely inspired, and through them thus inspired a Chain hangs together of others inspired divinely likewise. -- Plato
It is through geometry that one purifies the eye of the soul. -- Plato
The greater part of instruction is being reminded of things you already know. -- Plato
You can remember, a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones. -- Plato
Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do. -- Plato
The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things. -- Plato
The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery. -- Plato
In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection. -- Plato
All learning has an emotional base. -- Plato
Music is a defining element of character. -- Plato
The deity on purpose [sings] the liveliest of all lyrics through the most miserable poet. -- Plato
If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds. -- Plato
Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserve. -- Plato
Wealth does not bring excellence, but that wealth comes from excellence. -- Plato
Are not they temperate from a kind of intemperance? -- Plato
The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated. -- Plato
And we have made of ourselves living cesspools, and driven doctors to invent names for our diseases. -- Plato
For he, Adeimantus, whose mind is fixed upon true being, has surely no time to look down upon the affairs of earth, or to be filled with malice and envy, contending against men -- Plato
You should not honor men more than truth. -- Plato
Wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man could ever err, and therefore he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be wisdom no longer. -- Plato
not to care for any of his belongings before caring that he himself should be as good and as wise as possible, not to care for the city's possessions more than for the city itself, and to care for other things in the same way. -- Plato
Don't force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own. -- Plato
Let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be. -- Plato
Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything. -- Plato
The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort. -- Plato
He who is of a calm and happy nature, will hardly feel the pressure of age -- Plato
Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know. -- Plato
He who is learning and learning and doesn't apply what he knows is like the one who is plowing and plowing and doesn't seed. -- Plato
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. -- Plato
the creative soul creates not children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue, -- Plato
The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him, although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp. -- Plato
If we are to have any hope for the future, those who have lanterns must pass them on to others. -- Plato
Pleasure is the bait of sin -- Plato
The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention. -- Plato
He's garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth. -- Plato
And then, at this stage, every dictator comes up with the notorious and typical demand: he asks the people for bodyguards to protect him, the people's champion. -- Plato
Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue. -- Plato
The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles. -- Plato
It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke. -- Plato
Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them. -- Plato
Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them -- Plato
That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman. -- Plato
Arguments derived from probabilities are idle. -- Plato
What we can be positive about is what we have just said, namely that they must be given the right education, whatever that may be, as the surest way to make them behave humanely to each other and the subjects in their charge. -- Plato
But Above all things truth beareth away the victory -- Plato
A person who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he or she ought only to consider whether in doing anything he or she is doing right or wrong- acting the part of a good person or a bad person. -- Plato
Man's greatest victory is over oneself. -- Plato
The Paphian Queen to Cnidos made repair Across the tide to see her image there: Then looking up and round the prospect wide, When did Praxiteles see me thus? she cried. -- Plato
The untrained mind keeps up a running commentary, labelling everything, judging everything. Best to ignore that commentary. Don't argue or resist, just ignore. Deprived of attention and interest, this voice gets quieter and quieter and eventually just shuts up. -- Plato
Worthy of honor is he who does no injustice, and more than twofold honor, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any. -- Plato
Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large. -- Plato
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile. -- Plato
So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well. -- Plato
In an honest man there is always something of a child. -- Plato
When two friends, like you and me, are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that we give real responses, but that we base our responses solely on what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows. -- Plato
If the just man is good at keeping money, he is good at stealing it. -- Plato
Discordance is evil. Harmony is virtue. -- Plato
We are completely perplexed, then, and you must clear up the question for us, of what you intend to signify when you use the word "being". Obviously you must be quite familiar with what you mean, whereas we, who formerly imagined we knew, are now at a loss. -- Plato
This is the greatest good to man, to discourse daily on virtue, and other things which you have heard me discussing, examining both myself and others, -- Plato
The first and the best victory is to conquer self. -- Plato
When you admonish a wrongdoer, do so gently, that it may not lead to hostility. -- Plato
Life should be lived as play. -- Plato
I am smart because I know I nothing. -- Plato
Education is teaching our children to desire the right things. -- Plato
Just as bees make honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so do the wise profit from the most difficult of experiences. -- Plato
Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice. -- Plato
Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence. -- Plato
Fields and trees are not willing to teach me anything; but this can be effected by men residing in the city. -- Plato
Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not. -- Plato
Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Very true. Then, -- Plato
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it. -- Plato
Knowledge is the rediscovering of our own insight. -- Plato
SOCRATES: For doing evil to another is the same as injuring him? CRITO: Very true. SOCRATES: Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. -- Plato
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them. -- Plato
The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise. -- Plato
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments. -- Plato
There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them. -- Plato
Lord of Lords, grant us the good whether we pray for it or not, but evil keep from us, even though we pray for it. -- Plato
Now I am a diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a bad writer - his writing is good enough for him; and -- Plato
SOCRATES: But you do say that he who is a good rhapsode is also a good general. ION: Certainly. -- Plato
No man should be angry with what is true. -- Plato
Courage is knowing what not to fear. -- Plato
Man - a being in search of meaning. -- Plato
Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors -- Plato
That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless -- Plato
Of all the things which a man has, next to the gods his soul is the most divine and most truly his own. -- Plato
Much more wretched than lackof health inthe body, it is to dwell with a soul that is not healthy, but corrupt. -- Plato
Arguments, like men, are often pretenders. -- Plato
The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality. -- Plato
Too much attention to health is a hindrance to learning, to invention, and to studies of any kind, for we are always feeling suspicious shootings and swimmings in our heads, and we are prone to blame studies from them. -- Plato
Music is to the mind as air is to the body ... -- Plato
The function of the wing is to take what is heavy and raise it up in the region above. -- Plato
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom. -- Plato
Anything worth knowing is already known and must be remembered and reclaimed by the soul. -- Plato
Virtue is a kind of health, beauty and good habit of the soul. -- Plato
Lessons, however, that enter the soul against its will never grow roots and will never be preserved inside it. -- Plato
Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education. -- Plato
Between knowledge of what really exists and ignorance of what does not exist lies the domain of opinion. It is more obscure than knowledge, but clearer than ignorance. -- Plato
Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself. -- Plato
Appearance tyrannizes over truth. -- Plato
But I am too stupid to be convinced by him. -- Plato
Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine:
A tenth is Sappho, maid divine. -- Plato
Not exact, but: the two most important questions are; who will teach the children? what they teach them? -- Plato
The first step in learning is the destruction of human conceit. -- Plato
Music has the capacity to touch the innermost reaches of the soul and music gives flight to the imagination. -- Plato
Music gives wings to the mind and flight to the imagination. -- Plato
Everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger. -- Plato
Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument. -- Plato
No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes. -- Plato
Virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue. -- Plato
God forever geometrizes. -- Plato
May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ. -- Plato
Better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of all misfortune. -- Plato
Music gives a soul to the universe. -- Plato
For every man who has learned to fight in arms will desire to learn the proper arrangement of an army, which is the sequel of the lesson. -- Plato
Eros guides us to Logos. -- Plato
For it is obvious to everybody, I think, that this study [of astronomy] compels the soul to look upward and leads it away from things here to higher things. -- Plato
Better a good enemy than a bad friend. -- Plato
Those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight. -- Plato
In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by ... [philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society. -- Plato
They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases. -- Plato
Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good. -- Plato
I would fain grow old learning many things. -- Plato
Excellence" is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice.
We do not act "rightly" because we are "excellent",
in fact we achieve "excellence" by acting "rightly". -- Plato
For good nurture and education implant good constitutions. -- Plato
In order to be a good soldier it is necessary to know how to dance. -- Plato
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things. -- Plato
Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself -- Plato
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. -- Plato
And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice? -- Plato
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below. -- Plato
He is divine
but then I call all philosophers that. -- Plato
Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it. -- Plato
Aspiring minds must sometimes sustain loss. -- Plato
Friends should have all things in common. -- Plato
When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself. -- Plato
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers. -- Plato
For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. -- Plato
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws -- Plato
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant. -- Plato
A work well begun is half-ended. -- Plato
From a short-sided view, the whole moving contents of the heavens seemed to them a parcel of stones, earth and other soul-less bodies, though they furnish the sources of the world order. -- Plato
Before all it's necessary to look after the Soul, if you want the head and the rest of the body to function correctly. -- Plato
True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable. -- Plato
Do not use compulsion, but let early education be rather a sort of amusement. -- Plato
Avoid compulsion and let early education be a matter of amusement. Young children learn by games; compulsory education cannot remain in the soul. -- Plato
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die. -- Plato
The community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of its laws and constitution, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity, become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined. -- Plato
Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was every granted by the gods to man. -- Plato
...thus our State, which is also yours, will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. -- Plato
Violent pleasures which reach the soul through the body are generally of this sort-they are reliefs of pain. -- Plato
A certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the gods. -- Plato
When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect. -- Plato
For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakeable. -- Plato
To him who disgraces his family life is no life, and to such a person there is no one a friend, neither while living nor when dead. -- Plato
The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. -- Plato
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. -- Plato
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain. -- Plato
Then, when the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge? - is not that the inference? -- Plato
In order to seek one's own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary, everyday life. -- Plato
And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route. -- Plato
A house that has a library in it has a soul. -- Plato
It would be better for me ... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself. -- Plato
Lust is inseparably accompanied with the troubling of all order, with impudence, unseemliness, sloth, and dissoluteness. -- Plato
There is no harm in repeating a good thing. -- Plato
Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary. -- Plato
Man's music is seen as a means of restoring the soul, as well as confused and discordant bodily afflictions, to the harmonic proportions that it shares with the world soul of the cosmos. -- Plato
Societies aren t made of sticks and stones, but of men whose individual characters, by turning the scale one way or another, determine the direction of the whole. -- Plato
For a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. -- Plato
And poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well? -- Plato
It is vain for the sober man to knock at poesy's door. -- Plato
They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom. -- Plato
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. -- Plato
The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets. -- Plato
You cannot conceive the many without the one. -- Plato
Madness is a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention. -- Plato
Because it is correct to make a priority of young people, taking care that they turn out as well as possible ... -- Plato
I should not like to say ... that any kind of knowledge is not to be learned; for all knowledge appears to be a good. -- Plato
Is to the original as the sphere of opinion is to the sphere of knowledge? Most undoubtedly. -- Plato
Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants. -- Plato
The science [geometry] is pursued for the sake of the knowledge of what eternally exists, and not of what comes for a moment into existence, and then perishes. -- Plato
I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with -- Plato
It is only just that anything that grows up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes no one. -- Plato
Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors. -- Plato
Time is the moving image of reality -- Plato
We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it. -- Plato
He that lendeth to another in time of prosperity, shall never want help himself in the time of adversity. -- Plato
Abstinence is the surety of temperance. -- Plato
All who do evil and dishonorable things do them against their will. -- Plato
Light is the shadow of god -- Plato
There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless. -- Plato
He whom loves touches not walks in darkness. -- Plato
But whether the just have a better and happier life than the unjust is a further question which we also proposed to consider. -- Plato
All wars are fought for the sake of getting money. -- Plato
More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else. -- Plato
Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal. -- Plato
A written discourse on any subject is bound to contain much that is fanciful. -- Plato
Train children not by compulsion but as if they were playing. -- Plato
Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness. -- Plato
The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of bad men, and, growing like them, to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad. -- Plato
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty. -- Plato
Honesty is for the most par less profitable than dishonesty. -- Plato
Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly. -- Plato
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state? -- Plato
'But the man who is ready to taste every form of knowledge, is glad to learn and never satisfied - he's the man who deserves to be called a philosopher, isn't he?' -- Plato
The clearest argument against Plato's authorship is probably that Plato never wrote a work whose interpretation was as simple and straightforward as that of Alcibiades. -- Plato
Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth. -- Plato
We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue. -- Plato
To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent. -- Plato
Now, in my opinion, the procession of the native inhabitants was fine; -- Plato
One man cannot practice many arts with success. -- Plato
Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human. -- Plato
As it is, lovers of inquiry must follow their beloved wherever it may lead. -- Plato
Everything that deceives may be said to enchant. -- Plato
The physician of the soul is aware that his patient will receive no nourishment unless he has been cleaned out; and the soul of the Great King himself, if he has not undergone this purification, is unclean and impure. -- Plato
No attempt should be made to cure the body without the soul -- Plato
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue. -- Plato
The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine. -- Plato
When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has the eye to contemplate the vision. -- Plato
What then is the right way to live? Life should be lived as play. -- Plato
The god is the beautiful. -- Plato
The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not. -- Plato
The judge should not be young, he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others. -- Plato
Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not. ~ Protagoras -- Plato
The measure of a man is what he does with power. -- Plato
Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest. -- Plato
Those who reproach injustice do so because they are afraid not of doing it but of suffering it. -- Plato
If you ask: What is the good of education? The answer is easy: Education makes good men and good men act nobly. -- Plato
Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated. -- Plato
I do not know, men of Athens, how my accusers affected you; as for me, I was almost carried away in spite of myself, so persuasively did they speak. And yet, hardly anything of what they said is true. -- Plato
Give me a different set of mothers and I will give you a different world -- Plato
What is honored in a country will be cultivated there. -- Plato
Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil: many who are not good seem to be so, and conversely? That -- Plato
He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. -- Plato
There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen. -- Plato
A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things. -- Plato
Ignorance is the root cause of all difficulties. -- Plato
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life. -- Plato
In every man there is an eye of the soul, which ... is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen. -- Plato
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. -- Plato
Truth is its own reward. -- Plato
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato
The worst form of injustice is pretended justice. -- Plato
Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its law. -- Plato
Temperance, I replied, is the ordering or controlling of certain pleasures and desires; this is curiously enough implied in the saying of 'a man being his own master;' and other traces of the same notion may be found in language. No -- Plato
It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be. -- Plato
When man is not properly trained, he is the most savage animal on the face of the globe. -- Plato
Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment. -- Plato
The right question is usually more important than the right answer. -- Plato
He was a wise man who invented beer. -- Plato
All is flux, nothing stays still -- Plato
People too smart to get involved in politics are doomed to live in societies run by people who aren't. -- Plato
The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. -- Plato
All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth -- Plato
Only the dead will know the end of the war. -- Plato
He will find people there who, seeing the want, undertake the office of salesmen. In well-ordered states they are commonly those who are the weakest in bodily strength, and therefore of little use for any other purpose; -- Plato
The most important thing is not life, but the good life. -- Plato
All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance -- Plato
Knowledge unqualified is knowledge simply of something learned. -- Plato
Rhythm and harmony enter most powerfully into the inner most part of the soul and lay forcible hands upon it, bearing grace with them, so making graceful him who is rightly trained. -- Plato
Would he not say with Homer,. Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their ... -- Plato
Let him alone, he has a way of stopping anywhere and losing himself without any reason. I believe that he will soon appear; do not therefore disturb him. -- Plato
A State would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers. -- Plato
If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools. -- Plato
Now nothing can be more important than that the work of a soldier should be well done. -- Plato
Don't ask a poet to explain himself. He cannot. -- Plato
They certainly give very strange names to diseases. -- Plato
Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another. -- Plato
The beginning is the chiefest part of any work. -- Plato
It is beautiful to wish to add another's light to your own. -- Plato
I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block of wax ... and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we forget or do not know. -- Plato
The orators and the despots have the least power in their cities ... since they do nothing that they wish to do, practically speaking, though they do whatever they think to be best. -- Plato
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses. -- Plato
Man was not made for himself alone -- Plato
As the proverb says, "a good beginning is half the business" and "to have begun well" is praised by all. -- Plato
And tell him it's quite true that the best of the philosophers are of no use to their fellows; but that he should blame, not the philosophers, but those who fail to make use of them. -- Plato
And the quality of good judgement is clearly a form of knowledge and skill, as it is because of knowledge and not because of ignorance that we judge well. -- Plato
All knowledge is but remembrance. -- Plato
Someday, in the distant future, our grand-children' s grand-children will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge. -- Plato
Knowledge is true opinion. -- Plato
The choice of souls was in most cases based on their own experience of a previous life ... Knowledge easily acquired is that which the enduing self had in an earlier life, so that it flows back easily. -- Plato
[M]ere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion. -- Plato
I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have. -- Plato
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous. -- Plato
Every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing ... There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any writing of mine dealing with this subject. -- Plato
Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil. -- Plato
For as there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. -- Plato
And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they are ill- educated, become the worst? -- Plato
If there is a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of humanity toward perfection. -- Plato
Excellent things are rare. -- Plato
If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes -- Plato
Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul. -- Plato
Science is nothing but perception. -- Plato
I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of [c] the stronger. -- Plato
Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety. -- Plato
Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens. -- Plato
Do not expect justice where might is right. -- Plato
Justice is having and doing what is one's own. -- Plato
Of the Greek authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has had the greatest influence. -- Plato
Let no one destitute of Geometry enter my doors. -- Plato
He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act -- Plato
Yet as the proverb says, 'In vino veritas,' whether with boys, or without them (In allusion to two proverbs.); and therefore I must speak. -- Plato
When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure. -- Plato
The only thing worse than suffering an injustice is committing an injustice. -- Plato
The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction. -- Plato
If someone separated the art of counting and measuring and weighing from all the other arts, what was left of each (of the others) would be, so to speak, insignificant. -- Plato
The music masters familiarize children's minds with rhythms and melodies, thus making them more civilized, more balanced, better adjusted in themselves, and more capable in whatever they say or do, for rhythm and harmony are essential to the whole of life. -- Plato
The way up and the way down are one and the same. -- Plato
He who does not desire power is fit to hold it. -- Plato
I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other. -- Plato
So the nature required to make a really noble Guardian of our commonwealth will be swift and strong, spirited, and philosophic. -- Plato
That a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed. -- Plato
Pooh," he said. "Much alike, aren't they, this case and that!"
"There is nothing to hinder their being so," said I, "but even if they are not alike and if the man thinks they are, do you believe he will any the less answer what appears to him, whether we forbid him or not? -- Plato
Nothing in human affairs is worth any great anxiety. -- Plato
Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind. -- Plato
An old man is twice a child, and so is a drunken man. -- Plato
The flute is not an instrument that has a good moral effect - it is too exciting. -- Plato
No one can escape his destiny. -- Plato
Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he had no desire for that of which he feels no want. -- Plato
The knowledge of which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal. -- Plato
He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god. -- Plato
Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself agreeable to them; for from the good you will learn what is good, but if you mix with the bad you will lose the intelligence which you already have. -- Plato
Those who have knowledge are more confident than those who have no knowledge, and they are more confident after they have learned than before. -- Plato
Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God? -- Plato
That not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued. -- Plato
The proud man is forsaken of God. -- Plato
If you think your child's academic studies are more important than the arts, think again. -- Plato
Haughtiness lives under the same roof with solitude. -- Plato
The prison of lust is just that very one of which the soul shuts the doors upon herself; for each act of indulgence is the shooting of a fresh bolt. -- Plato
Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter here. -- Plato
The Earth is like one of those balls made of twelve pieces of skin. -- Plato
For it is likely that if a city of good men came to be, there would be a fight over not ruling, just as there is now over ruling; and there it would become manifest that a true ruler really does not naturally consider his own advantage but rather that of the one who is ruled. -- Plato
It is impossible to conceive of many without one. -- Plato
When the citizens of a society can see and hear their leaders, then that society should be seen as one. -- Plato
Then we shan't regard anyone as a lover of knowledge or wisdom who is fussy about what he studies ... -- Plato
For this," he said, "is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body. -- Plato
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education. -- Plato
Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth ... And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth? -- Plato
Wherever it has been established that it is shameful to be involved with sexual relationships with men, that is due to evil on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice on the part of the governed. -- Plato
No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern. -- Plato
The rulers make laws for their own interests. But -- Plato
We are twice armed if we fight with faith. -- Plato
Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it. -- Plato
Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers. -- Plato
For it is not because they fear doing unjust deeds, but because they fear suffering them, that those who blame injustice do so. -- Plato
Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power ... -- Plato
The god, O men, seems to me to be really wise; and by his oracle to mean this, that the wisdom of this world is foolishness and of none effect. -- Plato
The soul should concentrate itself by itself. -- Plato
The beginning is half of the whole. -- Plato
wherever the argument, like a wind, tends, thither must we go. -- Plato
Do thine own work, and know thyself. -- Plato
No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself -- Plato
When the music changes, the walls of the city shake. -- Plato
Yes, if he is to have true music in him. -- Plato
To suffer is better than to do evil;' and the art of rhetoric is described as only useful for the purpose of self-accusation. -- Plato
Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for its sake. -- Plato
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories. -- Plato
Attention to health is life greatest hindrance. -- Plato
I prefer nothing, unless it is true. -- Plato
Don't quarrel with your parents even if you are on the right. -- Plato
The mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because the new is always left in the place of the old. -- Plato
Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man. -- Plato
Through obedience learn to command. -- Plato
Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year. -- Plato
Writing is the geometry of the soul. -- Plato
No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God. -- Plato
Knowledge is the food of the soul. -- Plato
Friends have all things in common. -- Plato
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable. -- Plato
The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself. -- Plato
The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies ... they are the trees and the plants and the seeds. -- Plato
Be kind, for everyone is having a hard battle. -- Plato
Fly from the company of the wicked
fly and turn not back. -- Plato
The worst of all deceptions is self-deception. -- Plato
For men born and educated like our citizens, the only way, in my opinion, of arriving at a right conclusion about the possession and use of women and children is to follow the path on which we originally started, when we said that the men were to be the guardians and watchdogs of the herd. True. -- Plato
For he who is a corrupter of the laws is more than likely to be a corrupter of the young and foolish portion of mankind. -- Plato
Physical excellence does not of itself produce a good mind and character: on the other hand, excellence of mind and character will make the best of the physique it is given. -- Plato
Repeating the commonplaces about atheism and materialism and sophistry, which are the stock-accusations against all philosophers when there is nothing else to be said of them. -- Plato
but I want you to put him down. -- Plato
No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise. -- Plato
There is yet something remaining for the dead, and some far better thing for the good than for the evil. -- Plato
Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically. -- Plato
The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful -- Plato
Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul -- Plato
To think truly is noble and to be deceived is base. -- Plato
Everything that deceives also enchants. -- Plato
The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage. -- Plato
An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers. -- Plato
Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers. -- Plato
We become what we contemplate. -- Plato
The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics. -- Plato
To a good man nothing that happens is evil. -- Plato
Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes. -- Plato
Art has no end but its own perfection. -- Plato
To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed. -- Plato
The soul of man is immortal and imperishable. -- Plato
Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded ... -- Plato
There is truth in wine and children -- Plato
The tyranny imposed on the soul by anger, or fear, or lust, or pain, or envy, or desire, I generally call 'injustice.' -- Plato
A life without investigation is not worth living -- Plato
It is only the dead who have seen the end of war. -- Plato
Let him take heart who does advance, even in the smallest degree. -- Plato
The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state. -- Plato
Interference by the three classes with each other s jobs, and interchange of jobs between them, therefore, does the greatest harm to our state, and we are entirely justified in calling it the worst of evils. -- Plato
Mathematics is like draughts in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state. -- Plato
Not only is the old man twice a child, but also the man who is drunk. -- Plato
The tools that would teach men their own use would be beyond price. -- Plato
For we cannot suppose that States are made of 'oak and rock,' and not out of the human natures which are in them, and which in a figure turn the scale and draw other things after them? Yes, -- Plato
This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related. -- Plato
He meant friends owe [10] something good to their friends, never something bad. -- Plato
The three wishes of every man: to be healthy, to be rich by honest means, and to be beautiful. -- Plato
No human thing is of serious importance. -- Plato
Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them. -- Plato
Your silence gives consent. -- Plato
Equals, the proverb goes, delight in equals. -- Plato
The rest of the Dialogue of Critias has been lost. -- Plato
Modesty is becoming in youth. -- Plato
The beginning is the most important part of the work. -- Plato
The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. -- Plato
This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are. -- Plato
It is impossible to improve the world if first the man does not improve -- Plato
All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue. -- Plato
By the golden chain Homer meant nothing else than the sun. -- Plato
The good, of course, is always beautiful, and the beautiful never lacks proportion. -- Plato
I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it. -- Plato
He seemeth to be most ignorant that trusteth most to his wit. -- Plato
Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst. -- Plato
Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness. -- Plato
There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good. -- Plato
Poverty doesn't come because of the decrease of wealth but because of the increase of desires. -- Plato
If you harm a horse do you make him better or worse?"
"Worse. -- Plato
The life which is not examined is not worth living. -- Plato
Not by force shall the children learn, but through play -- Plato
The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine. -- Plato
A nation will prosper to the degree that it honors it's teachers. -- Plato
He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side. -- Plato
It is better to be wise, and not to seem so, than to seem wise, and not be so; yet men, for the most part, desire the contrary. -- Plato
You wouldn't know him if I told you the name. HIPPIAS: But I know right now he's an ignoramus. -- Plato
Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences. -- Plato
Upon consideration of the central question of the moon's toughness there can be little doubt. It is hella tough. -- Plato
Isn't there still one other possibility ... ," I said, "our persuading you that you must let us go? -- Plato
He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself. -- Plato
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. -- Plato
Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year, for it is wrong to add fire to fire. -- Plato
The physician, to the extent he is a physician, considers only the good of the patient in what he prescribes, and his own not at all -- Plato
Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding. -- Plato
Mob rule and emasculation of the wise' and 'who will watch the guardians'? -- Plato
A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men. -- Plato
The matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice ... -- Plato
Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? -- Plato
Today Learner is Tomorrow Leader -- Plato
Men of sound sense have Law for their god, but men without sense Pleasure. -- Plato
Knowledge of the soul is the only universal truth and the only wisdom - all other knowledge is transient. -- Plato
Wisdom is a blaze, kindled by a leaping spark. -- Plato
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men. -- Plato
I grow impatient at the length of your exordium. -- Plato
Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself. -- Plato
The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them. -- Plato
The contemplation of beauty causes the soul to grow wings. -- Plato
No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth. -- Plato
The unexplored life is not worth living! -- Plato
Courage is knowing what to fear. -- Plato
May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me. -- Plato
Wonder is the beginning of the desire to know the beautiful and the good. -- Plato
Geometry existed before creation. -- Plato
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. -- Plato
The wisest have the most authority -- Plato
The most important stage of any enterprise is the beginning. -- Plato
If we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. -- Plato
I fast for greater physical and mental efficiency -- Plato
Just as things in a picture, when viewed from a distance, appear to be all in one and the same condition and alike. -- Plato
Even God is said to be unable to use force against necessity. -- Plato
The first and best victory is to conquer self -- Plato
Friends possess everything in common. -- Plato
Harmony and grace depend on simplicity ... the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character. -- Plato
The seen is the changing, the unseen is the unchanging. -- Plato
As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser. -- Plato
Geometry draws the soul towards truth. -- Plato
Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle. -- Plato
We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in
the idle fancy that we already know
or that it is of no use seeking to
know what we do not know. -- Plato
When you feel grateful, you become great, and eventually attract great things. -- Plato
He who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink. -- Plato
The difference between the two classes is often a trivial concern; but in a state, and when affecting really important matters, becomes of all disorders the most hateful. -- Plato
You can't do good if you don't feel good. -- Plato
Those having torches will pass them on to others. -- Plato
A wise ignorance is an essential part of knowledge. -- Plato
Those who tell the stories rule society. -- Plato
No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated. -- Plato
The noblest of all studies is the study of what man is and of what life he should live. -- Plato
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. -- Plato
I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia - by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best.
(<>trong>trtrong> Jowett) -- Plato