Plato Quotes
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The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.
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Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
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Courage is a kind of salvation.
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Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.
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To do injustice is the greatest of all evils.
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A drunkard is unprofitable for any kind of good service.
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For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means?
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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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Don't ask a poet to explain himself. He cannot.
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Man is a biped without feathers.
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The only real ill-doing is the deprivation of knowledge.
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The most important stage of any enterprise is the beginning.
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Kindness which is bestowed on the good is never lost.
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Men of sound sense have Law for their god, but men without sense Pleasure.
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We obtain better knowledge of a person during one hour's play and games than by conversing with him for a whole year.
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The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge.
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Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
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The race of the guardians must be kept pure.
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And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life. Not because the law of the state requires him. Nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him. Nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty.
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The cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved; so that he passes a wrong judgment on what is just, good and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honor what belongs to himself in preference to truth. For he who intends to be a great man ought to love neither himself nor his own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by himself, or by another.
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And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth?
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It is proper for every one to consider, in the case of all men, that he who has not been a servant cannot become a praiseworthy master; and it is meet that we should plume ourselves rather on acting the part of a servant properly than that of the master, first, towards the laws, (for in this way we are servants of the gods), and next, towards our elders.
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Justice is having and doing what is one's own.
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And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they are ill- educated, become the worst?