Plato Quotes
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That a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.
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When you admonish a wrongdoer, do so gently, that it may not lead to hostility.
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The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage.
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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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Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine: A tenth is Sappho, maid divine.
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To do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it.
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The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.
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Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.
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There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen.
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A work well begun is half-ended.
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The people always have 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.
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My plainness of speech makes people hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.
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Don't ask a poet to explain himself. He cannot.
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Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
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From all wild beasts, a child is the most difficult to handle.
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Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.
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Aspiring minds must sometimes sustain loss.
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The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
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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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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 function of the wing is to take what is heavy and raise it up in the region above.
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For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.
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For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories... The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
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The cure of the part should not be attempted without the cure of the whole.