Plato Quotes

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.

The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.

By the golden chain Homer meant nothing else than the sun.

We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing.

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.

Much sleep is not required by nature, either for our souls or bodies, or for the action in which they are concerned.

He seemeth to be most ignorant that trusteth most to his wit.

Now nothing can be more important than that the work of a soldier should be well done.

From all wild beasts, a child is the most difficult to handle.

Violent pleasures which reach the soul through the body are generally of this sort-they are reliefs of pain.

. . . 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.

You cannot conceive the many without the one...The study of the unit is among those that lead the mind on and turn it to the vision of reality.

The god is the beautiful.

What I say is that 'just' or 'right' means nothing but what is in the interest of the stronger party.

Thus does the Muse herself move men divinely inspired, and through them thus inspired a Chain hangs together of others inspired divinely likewise.

Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

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.

I've learned through experience that life is never that bad. The secret is just paying attention to how you feel and not letting anyone else dictate what in your heart you know is right.

Kindness which is bestowed on the good is never lost.

The passionate are like men standing on their heads, they see all things the wrong way.

I have good hope that there is something after death.

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.

Do not use compulsion, but let early education be rather a sort of amusement.

The race of the guardians must be kept pure.

He that lendeth to another in time of prosperity, shall never want help himself in the time of adversity.

As the proverb says, "a good beginning is half the business" and "to have begun well" is praised by all.

Before all it's necessary to look after the Soul, if you want the head and the rest of the body to function correctly.

He whom loves touches not walks in darkness.

Wine fills the heart with courage.

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.

You need some knowledge to recognize knowledge, so where does the first knowledge come from?

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?

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.

Time is the moving imago of the unmoving eternity.

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.

Music gives wings to the mind and flight to the imagination.

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.

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.

Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter. Said to have been inscribed above the door of Plato's Academy.

To begin with the wine jar in learning the potter's art.

Man is a biped without feathers.

The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful.

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.

Even God is said to be unable to use force against necessity.

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.

To think truly is noble and to be deceived is base.

The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of a bad man.

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.

Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.