Plato Quotes

The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.

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

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke.

Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

God is a geometrician.

Lord of Lords, grant us the good whether we pray for it or not, but evil keep from us, even though we pray for it.

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

The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge.

So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well.

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

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.

Wealth does not bring excellence, but that wealth comes from excellence.

May not the wolf, as the proverb says, claim a hearing?

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.

The judge should not be young, he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

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

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

Those who reproach injustice do so because they are afraid not of doing it but of suffering it.

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable.

There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.

I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them.

To begin with the wine jar in learning the potter's art.

You get to know someone better by playing for an hour than by talking for a year.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

There is nothing so delightful as the hearing, or the speaking of truth. For this reason, there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive.

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.

Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life.

No man's nature is able to know what is best for the social state of man; or, knowing, always able to do what is best.

Then may we not fairly plead in reply that our true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things with the mental faculty fitted to do so, that is, with the faculty which is akin to reality, and which approaches and unites with it, and begets intelligence and truth as children, and is only released from travail when it has thus reached knowledge and true life and satisfaction?

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

Because, unlike courage and wisdom, which made our state brave and wise by being present in a particular part of it, discipline operates by being diffused throughout the whole of it. It produces a concord between its strongest and weakest and middle elements, whether you define them by the standard of good sense, or of strength, or of numbers or money or the like. And so we are quite justified in regarding discipline as this sort of natural harmony and agreement between higher and lower about which of them is to rule in state and individual.

The true musician is attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre... for he truly has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged in the Dorian mode. Such a one makes me joyous with the sound of his voice, so eager am I in drinking in his words.

Those who tell the stories rule society.

For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means?

Of all the Gods, Love is the best friend of humankind, the helper and healer of all ills that stand in the way of human happiness.

I do not live to play, but I play in order that I may live, and return with greater zest to the labors of life.

For when there are no words, it is very difficult to recognize the meaning of the harmony and rhythm, or to see any worldly object is imitated by them.

Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself.

There's a victory and defeat-the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats-which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.

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.