Plato Quotes

You take the words in the sense which is most damaging to the argument.

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.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

All is flux, nothing stays still

Beauty, like an animal, doesn’t always behave.

Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?

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.

Reading Plato should be easy

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.

No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself

But I don't think we shall quarrel about a word - the subject of our inquiry is too important for that.

Light is the shadow of god

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.

The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.

Be kind, because everyone is having a really hard time.

And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.

Keenness is dangerous but also rebirth of thought and mind. Complacency is the death of ideals. Always stay keen.

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?

What is honored in a culture gets cultivated there.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.

As Plato: What is play and delightful one kind of child is coercion and torture for another, and will not take no matter how much coercion is applied.

He who is of a 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.

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.

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.

I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true.

No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet

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.

And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world. (p. 40)

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

Time is the moving image of eternity.

If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.

Paraphrasing Plato's Republic: "Only people who have allowed themselves to be reformed by reality have it in themselves to reform their polis for the better.

Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors.

If you want to understand language, spend less time in the library with Plato and more time on the buses with people.

Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.

I know that I know nothing

I am smart because I know I nothing.

a life without investigation is not worth living

virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.

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,

The perfect state is one where men weep and rejoice over the same things.

for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.

[On the virtuous man] "He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself.

For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet