Plato Quotes

Only the dead will know the end of the war.

No man should be angry with what is true.

There is truth in wine and children

What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.

There is no other start to philosophy but wonder.

What essence is to generation, that truth is to belief.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

A wise ignorance is an essential part of knowledge.

I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power.

We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing.

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

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know.

Self conquest is the greatest of victories.

To do injustice is the greatest of all evils.

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

If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.

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

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

Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.

The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch.

...there are some who are naturally fitted for philosophy and political leadership, while the rest should follow their lead and let philosophy alone.

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter consciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers.

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

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.

The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage.

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

Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.

Aspiring minds must sometimes sustain loss.

Love is a serious mental disease.

Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

Even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.

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.

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

He who love touches walks not in darkness.

Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.

Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.

It was Plato, according to Sosigenes, who set this as a problem for those concerned with these things, through what suppositions of uniform and ordered movements the appearances concerning the movements of the wandering heavenly bodies could be preserved.

Seek truth while you are young, for if you do not, it will later escape your grasp

A good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and his affairs are not neglected by the gods.

The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers.

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

The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage.

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.

Every man is a poet when he is in love.

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

The tyranny imposed on the soul by anger, or fear, or lust, or pain, or envy, or desire, I generally call 'injustice.'

Now nothing can be more important than that the work of a soldier should be well done.