Plato Quotes
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To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.
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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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Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
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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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For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.
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Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
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I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse.
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Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.
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Those who are not schooled and practised in truth [who are not honest and upright men] can never manage aright the government, nor yet can those who spend their lives as closet philosophers; because the former have no high purpose to guide their actions, while the latter keep aloof from public life.
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When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
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Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserve.
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Putting the shoe on the wrong foot.
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He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.
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Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors.
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The only thing worse than suffering an injustice is committing an injustice.
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Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state.
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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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Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.
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The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of bad men, and, growing like them, to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad.
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They ought to be gentle to their friends and dangerous to their enemies.
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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.
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For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge,--such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.
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Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
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The tyranny imposed on the soul by anger, or fear, or lust, or pain, or envy, or desire, I generally call 'injustice.'