Plato Quotes

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

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.

More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils - no, nor the human race, as I believe - and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.

As to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?-he whom love touches not walks in darkness.

May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me.

Socrates said that, from above, the Earth looks like one of those twelve-patched leathern balls.

Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or anything better than cohesion and unity?

Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong ... And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.

Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

Through obedience learn to command.

Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for its sake.

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.

Everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.

As the proverb says, "a good beginning is half the business" and "to have begun well" is praised by all.

When the citizens of a society can see and hear their leaders, then that society should be seen as one.

It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from asbsolute beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of causality?

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.

As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.

To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.

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

If you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange.

The Paphian Queen to Cnidos made repair Across the tide to see her image there: Then looking up and round the prospect wide, When did Praxiteles see me thus? she cried.

There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

All wars are fought for the sake of getting money.

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.

And is it not true that in like manner a leader of the people who, getting control of a docile mob, does not withhold his hand from the shedding of tribal blood, but by the customary unjust accusations brings a citizen into court and assassinates him, blotting out a human life, and with unhallowed tongue and lips that have tasted kindred blood, banishes and slays and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands.

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

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

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

The physician, to the extent he is a physician, considers only the good of the patient in what he prescribes, and his own not at all

All thought begins with the recognition that something is out of place.

One man cannot practice many arts with success.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Do not expect justice where might is right.

The well-nurtured youth is one who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he became a man of gentle heart.

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

Is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship?

Was not this ... what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom -- to know what is known and what is unknown to us?

That's what education should be," I said, "the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.

The good is the beautiful.

Interference by the three classes with each other s jobs, and interchange of jobs between them, therefore, does the greatest harm to our state, and we are entirely justified in calling it the worst of evils.

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

Beauty is a natural superiority.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously.

To win over your bad self is the grandest and foremost of victories.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.

Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity.

No man should be angry with what is true.

The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets.

Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.

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

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