Plato Quotes
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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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The Earth is like one of those balls made of twelve pieces of skin.
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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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Athenian men, I respect and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you.
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Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.
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Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.
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Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
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Then may we not fairly plead in reply that our true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things with the mental faculty fitted to do so, that is, with the faculty which is akin to reality, and which approaches and unites with it, and begets intelligence and truth as children, and is only released from travail when it has thus reached knowledge and true life and satisfaction?
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...in every man there is an eye of the soul, which...is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen.
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As a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.
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I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse.
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Wealth and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.
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Do thine own work, and know thyself.
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Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument.
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Would that I were the heaven, that I might be all full of love-lit eyes to gaze on thee.
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What is better adapted than the festive use of wine in the first place to test and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is there cheaper or more innocent?
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I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth.
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Abstinence is the surety of temperance.
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He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.
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The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.
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But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; - that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.
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Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
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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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Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.