Quotes by Plato (Page 3 of 3)

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.

Philosophy is the highest music.

No human thing is of serious importance.

When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

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

The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

One man cannot practice many arts with success.

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

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.

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

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

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.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

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

No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

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

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

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

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

Science is nothing but perception.

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

Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.

It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

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, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

They certainly give very strange names to diseases.

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.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

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

The good is the beautiful.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

Philosophy begins in wonder.