Plato

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

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

“Ideas are the source of all things”

“Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.”

“The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.”

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

“For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge,--such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.”

“Follow your dream as long as you live, do not lessen the time of following desire, for wasting time is an abomination of the spirit.”

“Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light.”

“Democracy passes into despotism.”

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

“... our purpose in founding our state was not to promote the happiness of a single class, but, so far as possible, of the whole community. Our idea was that we were most likely to justice in such a community, and so be able to decide the question we are trying to answer. We are therefore at the moment trying to construct what we think is a happy community by securing the happiness not of a select minority, but of a whole.”

“Love' is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”

“We see many instances of cities going down like sinking ships to their destruction. There have been such wrecks in the past and there surely will be others in the future, caused by the wickedness of captains and crews alike. For these are guilty men, whose sin is supreme ignorance of what matters most.”

“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.”

“We become what we contemplate.”

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

“Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.”

“According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.”

“No one is so cowardly that Love could not inspire him to heroism.”

“The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.”

“The beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.”

“Through obedience learn to command.”

“When there is crime in society, there is no justice.”

“It is beautiful to wish to add another's light to your own.”

“Give me a different set of mothers and I will give you a different world”

“The beginning is half of the whole.”

“One should turn towards the main ocean of the-beautiful-in-the-world so that one may by, contemplation of this Form, bring forth in all their splendor many fair fruits of discourse and meditation in a plenteous crop of philosophy.”

“They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom.”

“Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.”

“Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable, inasmuch as he has the fountain of reason in him not yet regulated.”

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

“A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!”

“Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like.”

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

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

“A good decision is based on knowledge, and not on numbers.”

“When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.”

“Let him take heart who does advance, even in the smallest degree.”

“The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues-not faction, but rather distraction-there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil . . . Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth.”

“A nation will prosper to the degree that it honors it's teachers.”

“The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.”

“So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well.”

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

“Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.”

“Perfect wisdom has four parts: Wisdom, the principle of doing things aright. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.”

“Do thine own work, and know thyself.”

“To think truly is noble and to be deceived is base.”

“Other people are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be troubled when that came for which they had all along been eagerly practicing.”

“Those having torches will pass them on to others.”