Plato Quotes

Before all it's necessary to look after the Soul, if you want the head and the rest of the body to function correctly.

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

Justice in the individual is now defined analogously to justice in the state. The individual is wise and brave in virtue of his reason and spirit respectively: he is disciplined when spirit and appetite are in proper subordination to reason. He is just in virtue of the harmony which exists when all three elements of the mind perform their proper function and so achieve their proper fulfillment; he is unjust when no such harmony exists.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

What the expression is intended to mean, I think, is that there is a better and a worse element in the character of each individual, and that when the naturally better element controls the worse then the man is said to be "master of himself", as a term of praise. But when - as a result of bad upbringing or bad company one s better element is overpowered by the numerical superiority of one s worse impulses, then one is criticized for not being master of oneself and for lack of self control.

Thinking and spoken discourse are the same thing, except that what we call thinking is, precisely, the inward dialogue carried on by the mind with itself without spoken sound.

True friendship can exist only between equals.

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.

Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule.

He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.

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

The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.

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

The beginning is the chiefest part of any work.

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

Rhythm and harmony enter most powerfully into the inner most part of the soul and lay forcible hands upon it, bearing grace with them, so making graceful him who is rightly trained.

Not only is the old man twice a child, but also the man who is drunk.

Do not expect justice where might is right.

Science is nothing but perception.

Truth is its own reward.

No soul willfully does wrong.

They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

In one sense it is evident that the art of kingship does include the art of lawmaking. But the political ideal is not full authority for laws but rather full authority for a man who understands the art of kingship and has kingly ability.

Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.

A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.

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

Great is the issue at stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one be profited if, under the influence of money or power, he neglect justice and virtue?

Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power.

Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.

He who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink.

Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth... And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth?

The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit.

Honesty is for the most par less profitable than dishonesty.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

What is better adapted than the festive use of wine in the first place to test and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is there cheaper or more innocent?

If you think your child's academic studies are more important than the arts, think again.

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.