Plato Quotes

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.

Would that I were the heaven, that I might be all full of love-lit eyes to gaze on thee.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

It is through geometry that one purifies the eye of the soul.

The proud man is forsaken of God.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

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.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

All knowledge is but remembrance.

In an honest man there is always something of a child.

We understand why children are afraid of darkness ... but why are men afraid of light?

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Geometry existed before creation.

The most beautiful motion is that which accomplishes the greatest results with the least amount of effort.

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

Access to power must be confined to those who are not in love with it.

Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.

In order to be a good soldier it is necessary to know how to dance.

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.

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.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.

Train children not by compulsion but as if they were playing.

You get to know someone better by playing for an hour than by talking for a year.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them.

Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them

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.

...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.

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.

Those who reproach injustice do so because they are afraid not of doing it but of suffering it.

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.

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

People too smart to get involved in politics are doomed to live in societies run by people who aren't.

Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself.

There is no such thing as a lovers' oath.

God is not the author of all things, but of good only.

Pleasure is the bait of sin

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

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.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty.

You cannot conceive the many without the one.

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.

Self conquest is the greatest of victories.

The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death.

If a man be endowed with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.

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.

Courage is knowing what to fear.