Plato Quotes
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Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom.
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Geometry existed before creation.
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In an honest man there is always something of a child.
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There is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of states, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just.
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No one is so cowardly that Love could not inspire him to heroism.
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And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.
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Madness is a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.
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If one sins against the laws of proportion and gives something too big to something too small to carry it - too big sails to too small a ship, too big meals to too small a body, too big powers to too small a soul - the result is bound to be a complete upset. In an outburst of hubris the overfed body will rush into sickness, while the jack-in-office will rush into the unrighteousness that hubris always breeds.
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Conversion is not implanting eyes, for they exist already; but giving them a right direction, which they have not.
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Discordance is evil. Harmony is virtue.
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... Societies aren t made of sticks and stones, but of men whose individual characters, by turning the scale one way or another, determine the direction of the whole.
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Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses.
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Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.
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If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection.
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Arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.
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Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.
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True friendship can exist only between equals.
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Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
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He whom loves touches not walks in darkness.
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Nothing ever is, everything is becoming.
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They assembled together and dedicated these as the first-fruits of their love to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims which are on every tongue- 'know thyselP and 'Nothing overmuch.'
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We must now examine whether just people also live better and are happier than unjust ones. I think it's clear already that this is so, but we must look into it further, since the argument concerns no ordinary topic, but the way we ought to live.
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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.
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And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life. Not because the law of the state requires him. Nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him. Nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty.