Plato Quotes

Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.

Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.

If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful.

Let no one destitute of geometry enter my doors.

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].

Ignorance: the root of all evil.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war

Nothing ever is, everything is becoming.

Man was not made for himself alone

Haughtiness lives under the same roof with solitude.

The wolf cares not, how many the sheep be.

Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

The first step in learning is the destruction of human conceit.

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.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

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.

Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality.

The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.

Excellent things are rare.

Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.

Ideas are the source of all things

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.

It is right to give every man his due.

Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

The cure of the part should not be attempted without the cure of the whole.

Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

It is not noble to return evil for evil, at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbors.

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?

They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.

Where love reigns, there's no need for laws.

Sin is disease, deformity, and weakness.

Love is a grave mental illness.

And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth?

A work well begun is half-ended.

It is vain for the sober man to knock at poesy's door.

Lust is inseparably accompanied with the troubling of all order, with impudence, unseemliness, sloth, and dissoluteness.

The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful

I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

Because it is correct to make a priority of young people, taking care that they turn out as well as possible.

Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?

Avoid compulsion and let early education be a matter of amusement. Young children learn by games; compulsory education cannot remain in the soul.

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.

The tyranny imposed on the soul by anger, or fear, or lust, or pain, or envy, or desire, I generally call 'injustice.'

Love is a severe mental disorder.

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.

That a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.