Plato Quotes
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A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.
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The love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another.
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I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power.
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It is fear and terror that make all men brave, except the philosophers. Yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice.
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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 good is the beautiful.
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Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue.
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To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.
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A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.
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It is right to give every man his due.
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Great is the issue at stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one be profited if, under the influence of money or power, he neglect justice and virtue?
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The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.
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Virtue is a kind of health, beauty and good habit of the soul.
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A good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and his affairs are not neglected by the gods.
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Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.
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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 penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.
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If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection.
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The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.
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And what do you say of lovers of wine... they are glad of any pretext of drinking any wine.
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The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.
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Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both in heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be from the first a partaker of truth, for then he can be trusted.
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Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all.
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Poverty doesn't come because of the decrease of wealth but because of the increase of desires.