Plato Quotes

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."

"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows."

"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."

"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."

"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."

"No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good."

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

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

"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."

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

"Courage is knowing what not to fear."

"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."

"Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind."

"Death is not the worst than can happen to men."

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

"I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict."

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet."

"States are as the men, they grow out of human characters."

"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."

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

"Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation."

"The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."

"Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike."

"Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence."

"You are so young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as judge of the highest matters."

"There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands."

"Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom."

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

"Democracy passes into despotism."

"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."

"Love is a serious mental disease."

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

"Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil."

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

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little."

"Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods."

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

"Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment."

"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant."

"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."

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

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."

"The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector."

"All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince."

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

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

"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."

"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work."

"Friends have all things in common."

"Attention to health is life greatest hindrance."

"The wisest have the most authority."

"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history."

"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men."

"The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort."

"Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences."

"The beginning is the most important part of the work."

"The life which is unexamined is not worth living."

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

"Moderation, which consists in an 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."

"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way."

"There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good."

"These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not."

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

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

"For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions."

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

"Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."

"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."

"Philosophy is the highest music."

"Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue."

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

"Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom."

"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty."

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

"Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?"

"There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them."

"Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow."

"We are twice armed if we fight with faith."

"It is right to give every man his due."

"Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent."

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

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

"The soul of man is immortal and imperishable."

"Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold and have escaped, not from one master, but from many."

"Knowledge is true opinion."

"If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things."

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

"The greatest penalty of evildoing - namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men."

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

"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?"

"That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman."

"Man - a being in search of meaning."

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

"Courage is a kind of salvation."

"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions."

"When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."

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

"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter."

"Science is nothing but perception."

"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."

"Only the dead have seen the end of the war."

"Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?"

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

"Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded."

"No human thing is of serious importance."

"Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half."

"No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding."

"You cannot conceive the many without the one."

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

"They certainly give very strange names to diseases."

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

"Necessity... the mother of invention."

"Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself."