Plato Quotes

But now the giant heads of Plato and Socrates, each with an expression of penetrating wisdom carved on his white features, surveyed the river and the melon beds beyond.

Do not expect Plato's ideal republic; be satisfied with even the smallest step forward, and consider this no small achievement.

My father was a dreamy fellow - he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.

Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter here.

Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs.

Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,--at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories.

As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.

No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.

Nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods.

Plato has dramatic strength ... but is quite unaware of the strength of the argument against his position ... and allows himself to be grossly unfair in arguing against it.

In spreading his ideas, Plato was willing to employ emotional appeals, state propaganda, and the use of force.

Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as Plato diluted by common sense. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily.

The atomists , unlike Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.

Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.

Plato's world of ideas is beautiful.

According to Plato, we don't learn anything. Our soul has lived so many lives that we know everything. Teachers and education can only remind us of what we already know.

Aristotle wore many rings and expensive clothes. ... Plato found this off-putting and unsuited for a philosopher.

And now - Plato's words mock me in the shadows on the ledge behind the flames: '...the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes.

What impressed me about Plato and Sartre was their conviction that we should live our lives in the light of big truths about reality and human existence.

It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at those schools!

Plato was continually saying to Xenocrates, "Sacrifice to the Graces.

Plato affirmed that the soul was immortal and clothed in many bodies successively.

Our life is frittered away by detail Simplify, simplify.” Or, as Plato wrote, “In order to seek one’s own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary, everyday life.

Reply to Plato: I seen horses I seen cows I haint never yet seen horsiness nor that there bovinity neither.

Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.

C. S. Lewis, Plato, Aristotle and many more names that I could add, including Einstein's, were individuals who were able to see the innate order in life, which others perceive as chaos.

Socrates condemned art because he preferred philosophy and only after much internal struggle did Plato accept this judgment.

To his [ Plato's ] great disappointment, he found Anaxagoras adducing simple physical reasons, instead of the teleological reasons, which he had expected. Such a teacher could no longer allure him.

Plato was right, but not quite right.

Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.

Plato's cave is full of freaks.

Ornate rhetorick taught out of the rule of Plato.... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.

What happened in the Western world was that Plato ceased to be the way people thought. Aristotle was rediscovered, and the modern, educated world moved toward Aristotelian thinking.

It must be so, Plato, thou reason'st well!

It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

What Plato was really asking was perhaps why a horse was a horse, and not, for example, a cross between a horse and a pig.

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

I have found that fate is as liquid and elusive a word as love. Plato thought they were the same ... Novalis wrote that fate and soul are two names for the same principle.

Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.

Plato is never sullen, Cervantes is never petulant, Demosthenes never comes unseasonably, Dante never stays too long.

The tetrahedron was [ Buckminster Fuller's] big thing. He'd talk about it in the same way Plato talked about angles.

Music does affect your opinions. Plato is supposed to have said "It's very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music into the republic."

Plotinus is a neo-Platonist, so he would encourage us to go back to Plato.

Let early education be a sort of amusement. You will then be better able to find out the natural bent.

Most people do not understand until old age what Plato tells them when they are young.

Nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky.