Plato Quotes
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Interference by the three classes with each other s jobs, and interchange of jobs between them, therefore, does the greatest harm to our state, and we are entirely justified in calling it the worst of evils.
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But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.
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The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.
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The judge should not be young, he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others.
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Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.
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The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
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Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow... even if that someone is yourself!
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Life must be lived as play.
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They ought to be gentle to their friends and dangerous to their enemies.
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If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
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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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Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors.
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The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful.
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Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.
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He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act.
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All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance.
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Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
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When two friends are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that we give real responses, but that we base our responses solely on what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows.
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The cause of all sins in every case lies in the person's excessive love of self.
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Let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.
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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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Fields and trees are not willing to teach me anything; but this can be effected by men residing in the city.