Plato Quotes

“They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.”

“Their military training will ensure success in war, but they must maintain unity by not allowing the state to grow to large, and by ensuring that the measures for promotion and demotion from one class to another are carried out. Above all they must maintain the educational system unchanged; for on education everything else depends, and it is an illusion to imagine that mere legislation without it can effect anything of consequence.”

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

“A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.”

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

“Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.”

“Moderation, which consists in indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance.”

“No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.”

“Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.”

“For our discussion is on no trifling matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives.”

“And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they are ill- educated, become the worst?”

“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.”

“Not by force shall the children learn, but through play”

“Physical excellence does not of itself produce a good mind and character: on the other hand, excellence of mind and character will make the best of the physique it is given.”

“The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful.”

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

“Time is the moving imago of the unmoving eternity.”

“If you ask: What is the good of education? The answer is easy: Education makes good men and good men act nobly.”

“I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that the only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom.”

“For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice.”

“'But the man who is ready to taste every form of knowledge, is glad to learn and never satisfied - he's the man who deserves to be called a philosopher, isn't he?'”

“Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.”

“Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race.”

“Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue.”

“And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth?”