Plato Quotes

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life.

There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

A dog has the soul of a philosopher.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Music then is simply the result of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony.

More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.

Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.

You should not honor men more than truth.

He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act

Integrity is your destiny-it is the light that guides your way.

A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.

I know nothing more worthy of a man's ambition than that his son be the best of men.

Happiness springs from doing good and helping others.

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

All wars are fought for the sake of getting money.

No human thing is of serious importance.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

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.

Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.

Those who tell the stories rule society.

He who does not desire power is fit to hold it.

We become what we contemplate.

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

Even the gods love jokes.

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

Don't quarrel with your parents even if you are on the right.

All learning is in the learner, not the teacher.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.

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.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

One cannot make a slave of a free person, for a free person is free even in a prison.

Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or anything better than cohesion and unity?

Music is a defining element of character.

If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.

Ignorance is the root cause of all difficulties.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Democracy passes into despotism.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

No evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death.

Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul

Better to complete a small task well, than to do much imperfectly.

Music gives a soul to the universe.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.