Plato Quotes
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Beauty is a natural superiority.
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If a man be endowed with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.
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Music gives wings to the mind and flight to the imagination.
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The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
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Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him.
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Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power.
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I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.
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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.
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The first step in learning is the destruction of human conceit.
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In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.
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Writing is the geometry of the soul.
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Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
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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.
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Ignorance: the root of all evil.
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... the community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of its laws and constitution, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity, become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined.
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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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No town can live peacefully whatever its laws when its citizens do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love.
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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?
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To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.
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A work well begun is half-ended.
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Is it not true that the clever rogue is like the runner who runs well for the first half of the course, but flags before reaching the goal: he is quick off the mark, but ends in disgrace and slinks away crestfallen and uncrowned. The crown is the prize of the really good runner who perseveres to the end.
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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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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.
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If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this.