Plato Quotes
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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 power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful.
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Wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man could ever err, and therefore he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be wisdom no longer.
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Man's music is seen as a means of restoring the soul, as well as confused and discordant bodily afflictions, to the harmonic proportions that it shares with the world soul of the cosmos.
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Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.
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Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
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All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.
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Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.
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Give me a different set of mothers and I will give you a different world.
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And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they are ill- educated, become the worst?
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You can remember, a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones.
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Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends.
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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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Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods.
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In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.
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The ultimate design of the Mysteries ... was to lead us back to the principles from which we descended, ... a perfect enjoyment of intellectual [spiritual] good.
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For though a man should be a complete unbeliever in the being of gods; if he also has a native uprightness of temper, such persons will detest evil in men; their repugnance to wrong disinclines them to commit wrongful acts; they shun the unrighteous and are drawn to the upright.
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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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Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth.
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When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently; but when it turns to the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence.
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So the state founded on natural principles is wise as a whole in virtue of the knowledge inherent in its smallest constituent class, which exercises authority over the rest. And the smallest class is the one which naturally possesses that form of knowledge which alone of all others deserves the title of wisdom.
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Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
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As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.
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To win over your bad self is the grandest and foremost of victories.