Plato Quotes
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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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The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.
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Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
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He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.
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Life must be lived as play.
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Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
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Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
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The good is the beautiful.
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No one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
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One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay.
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May not the wolf, as the proverb says, claim a hearing?
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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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The seen is the changing, the unseen is the unchanging.
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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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Wealth does not bring excellence, but that wealth comes from excellence.
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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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There is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not from the truth.
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So where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.
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Not by force shall the children learn, but through play.
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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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Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.
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It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.
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Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.
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If there is a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of humanity toward perfection.