Plato Quotes

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

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

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

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

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

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

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

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

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Necessity... the mother of invention.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses.

No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

Reality is created by the mind, we can change our reality by changing our mind.

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

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.

As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers.

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.

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.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

The first and the best victory is to conquer self.

He who love touches walks not in darkness.

Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren's grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

No human thing is of serious importance.

He was a wise man who invented beer.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.

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

A dog has the soul of a philosopher.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.

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

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

Time is the moving imago of the unmoving eternity.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

Knowledge is true opinion.

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

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

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

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.

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

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

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

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

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

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away. . . . A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons hiom.

All learning is in the learner, not the teacher.

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

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

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

There is no such thing as a lovers' oath.

Pleasure is the bait of sin

Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

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

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

Friends should have all things in common.

If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.

The life which is not examined is not worth living.

Wealth and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

The wisest have the most authority.

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

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.

Life should be lived as play.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

We are bound to our bodies like an oyster to its shell.

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

Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding.

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

Science is nothing but perception.

Even the gods love jokes.

Self conquest is the greatest of victories.

The true lover of learning then must his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth.... He whose desires are drawn toward knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasures I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one ... Then how can he who has the magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all times and all existence, think much of human life He cannot. Or can such a one account death fearful No indeed.

I think 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

Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants.

They certainly give very strange names to diseases.

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

Excellent things are rare.