Plato Quotes
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If we are to have any hope for the future, those who have lanterns must pass them on to others.
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They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom.
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Neither do the ignorant love wisdom or desire to become wise; for this is the grievous thing about ignorance, that those who are neither good nor beautiful think they are good enough, and do not desire that which they do not think they are lacking.
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If you ask: What is the good of education? The answer is easy: Education makes good men and good men act nobly.
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Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
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Music gives wings to the mind and flight to the imagination.
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For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.
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How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, "How does love suit with age, Sophocles - are you still the man you were?" he replied, "Peace, most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."
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The music masters familiarize children's minds with rhythms and melodies, thus making them more civilized, more balanced, better adjusted in themselves, and more capable in whatever they say or do, for rhythm and harmony are essential to the whole of life.
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If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection.
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Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was every granted by the gods to man.
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No one can escape his destiny.
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And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.
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May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ.
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For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.
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There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.
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He who is only an athlete is too crude, too vulgar, too much a savage. He who is a scholar only is too soft, to effeminate. The ideal citizen is the scholar athlete, the man of thought and the man of action.
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From a short-sided view, the whole moving contents of the heavens seemed to them a parcel of stones, earth and other soul-less bodies, though they furnish the sources of the world order.
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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.
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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.
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Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.
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Ignorance: the root of all evil.
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People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
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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.