Plato Quotes

I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.

When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle philosophers have had an interest in taking note of common fallacies in reasoning.

Plato conceived of philosophy as necessarily gregarious rather than solitary. The exposure of presumptions is best done in company, the more argumentative the better.

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.

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."

Plato's concern is not just an intellectual issue, but it is knitted with emotional life as well.

The ancient Greeks, as Plato reports, believed that we discover truth through "reminiscence," that is by "remembering," by intuitively searching into our own experience.

Plato once wanted to punish one of his slaves and asked his nephew to do the actual whipping for he himself did not own his anger.

You two go and have fun. I have plenty of stuff here to entertain me with. Plato rocks! (Tory)

Many modern scholars have found the asceticism expressed in Plato unacceptable; it does not sound like the advice of a reasonable man in the Cartesian tradition.

To Plato the desire for excessive and special foods ... is a hindrance to the soul's attainment of intelligence.

Plato rarely if ever states anything about himself clearly.

Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure.

A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.

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

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

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

Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.

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

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

For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet

the matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice ...

And, believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory

An over examination of life can deter you from life itself

[O]ther thinkers have philosophised since the time of Plato, but that does not destroy the interest and beauty of his philosophy

ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crises with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.

Plato and Aristotle are my teachers. Even Kant is my teacher, but my greatest teacher is my failures.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

Plato said that we are trapped inside a cave and know the world only through the shadows it casts on the wall. The skull is our cave, and mental representations are the shadows.

I stare out at the real world projected on the windows

Most beauty lies in the LIES of the beholder!

Many have rehashed the great works of Plato, and coming forward to the 20th century even Napoleon Hill gave us rehashed woo-woo when he replicated Wallace D. Wattles.

The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty

To call the Form [of the Good] eternal is misleading: that something lasts forever does not render it any the better, any more than long-enduring whiteness is whiter than ephemeral whiteness.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back."-Plato

My metaphysical thinking is more in alignment with Plato rather than Aristotle's." ~R. Alan Woods [2013]