Quotes by Plato (Page 2 of 4)

The truth is that we isolate a particular kind of love and appropriate it for the name of love, which really belongs to a wider whole.

In one sense it is evident that the art of kingship does include the art of lawmaking. But the political ideal is not full authority for laws but rather full authority for a man who understands the art of kingship and has kingly ability.

And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.

No man should be angry with what is true.

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.

There is nothing so delightful as the hearing, or the speaking of truth. For this reason, there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive.

Love is a severe mental disorder.

As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.

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

Do not expect justice where might is right.

Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable ... and when it happens to someone often ... he ends up ... hating everyone.

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

The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit.

There is a ... matter -- much more valuable and divine than natural philosophy . ... On this matter I must speak to you in enigmas.

Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest hold upon it.

He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.

There should be no element of slavery in learning. Enforced exercise does no harm to the body, but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children's lessons take the form of play.

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.

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

That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.

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

To begin is the most important part of any quest and by far the most courageous.

Every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing. ... There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any writing of mine dealing with this subject.

But at three, four, five, and even six years the childish nature will require sports; now is the time to get rid of self-will in him, punishing him, but not so as to disgrace him.

Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men.

But I have no time for such things; and the reason, my friend, is this. I am still unable, as the Delphic inscription orders, to know myself; and it really seems to be ridiculous to look into other things before I have understood that.

The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge.

Poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.

We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing.

My plainness of speech makes people hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.

Justice is useful when money is useless.

Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.

No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.

Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year.

Herein is the evil of ignorance , that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself : he has no desire for that of which he feels no want .

And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth.

The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.

When you swear, swear seriously and solemnly, but at the same time with a smile, for a smile is the twin sister of seriousness.

Those having torches will pass them on to others.

When two friends are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that we give real responses, but that we base our responses solely on what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows.

The three wishes of every man: to be healthy, to be rich by honest means, and to be beautiful.

Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.

Such, Echecrates, was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man.

A man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter consciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

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.

And the first step, as you know, is always what matters most, particularly when we are dealing with those who are young and tender. That is the time when they are taking shape and when any impression we choose to make leaves a permanent mark.

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

As long as I draw breath and am able, I won't give up practicing philosophy.

From all wild beasts, a child is the most difficult to handle.

It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke.

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

Worthy of honor is he who does no injustice, and more than twofold honor, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any.

Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants.

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

If we are to have any hope for the future, those who have lanterns must pass them on to others.

Of all the Gods, Love is the best friend of humankind, the helper and healer of all ills that stand in the way of human happiness.

It is our duty to select the best and most dependable theory that human intelligence can supply, and use it as a raft to ride the seas of life.

We should not exercise the body without the joint assistance of the mind; nor exercise the mind without the joint assistance of the body.

He that lendeth to another in time of prosperity, shall never want help himself in the time of adversity.

He who has followed the path of love's initiation in the proper order will on arriving at the end suddenly perceive a marvelous beauty, the source of all our efforts.

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.

He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.

No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.

Do thine own work, and know thyself.

Grant that I may become beautiful in my soul within, and that all my external possessions may be in harmony with my inner self. May I consider the wise to be rich, and may I have such riches as only a person of self-restraint can bear or endure.

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.

All learning is in the learner, not the teacher.

If it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.

If we are to keep our flock at the highest pitch of excellence, there should be as many unions of the best of both sexes, and as few of the inferior as possible, and that only the offspring of the better unions should be kept.

We obtain better knowledge of a person during one hour's play and games than by conversing with him for a whole year.

The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of a bad man.

Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue.

Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power.

For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.

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.

He who is learning and learning and doesn't apply what he knows is like the one who is plowing and plowing and doesn't seed.

Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large.

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

The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown.

Arguments, like men, are often pretenders.

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.

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.

The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers.

What then is the right way to live? Life should be lived as play.

Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.

Do not use compulsion, but let early education be rather a sort of amusement.

They would be subject to no one, neither to lawful ruler nor to the reign of law, but would be altogether and absolutely free. That is the way they got their tyrants, for either servitude or freedom, when it goes to extremes, is an utter bane, while either in due measure is altogether a boon.

It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.

He who advises a sick man, whose manner of life is prejudicial to health, is clearly bound first of all to change his patient's manner of life.

The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.

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

In order to seek one's own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary, everyday life.

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?

So the nature required to make a really noble Guardian of our commonwealth will be swift and strong, spirited, and philosophic.

So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey.

Knowledge of the soul is the only universal truth and the only wisdom -- all other knowledge is transient.

I have this tattooed on my left side! I love the saying and it's a perfect description of Karma, don't judge discriminate and don't do to someone what you wouldn't want done to you.

Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserve.

If someone separated the art of counting and measuring and weighing from all the other arts, what was left of each (of the others) would be, so to speak, insignificant.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

Until philosophers hold power, neither states nor individuals will have rest from trouble.

Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth... And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth?

A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot.

The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge.

What if the man could see Beauty Itself, pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality, and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine,... the man becoming in that communion, the friend of God,... ?

The contemplation of beauty causes the soul to grow wings.

Both poverty and wealth, therefore, have a bad effect on the quality of the work and the workman himself. Wealth and poverty, I answered. One produces luxury and idleness and a passion for novelty, the other meanness and bad workmanship and revolution into the bargain.

Even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom.

Music gives a soul to the universe.

From a short-sided view, the whole moving contents of the heavens seemed to them a parcel of stones, earth and other soul-less bodies, though they furnish the sources of the world order.

Much more wretched than lackof health inthe body, it is to dwell with a soul that is not healthy, but corrupt.

Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.

A drunkard is unprofitable for any kind of good service.

O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the gods, know that if you become worse, you shall go to worse souls, or if better to the better... In every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven.

Love: a grave mental disease.

The disposition of noble dogs is to be gentle with people they know and the opposite with those they don't know...How, then, can the dog be anything other than a lover of learning since it defines what's its own and what's alien.

Knowledge is the food of the soul.

Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.

Those who don't know must learn from those who do.

For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them.

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