Plato Quotes
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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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The seen is the changing, the unseen is the unchanging.
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No one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
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A drunkard is unprofitable for any kind of good service.
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Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.
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'That is the story. Do you think there is any way of making them believe it?' ' Not in the first generation', he said, 'but you might succeed with the second and later generations.'
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There will be no end to the troubles of states,Or of humanity itself,Till philosophers become kings in this world,Or till those we now call kings and rulers really And truly become philosophers.
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It is right to give every man his due.
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If there is a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of humanity toward perfection.
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The Graces sought some holy ground, Whose sight should ever please; And in their search the soul they found Of Aristophanes.
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Even the gods love jokes.
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The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
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In heaven there is laid up a pattern which he who chooses may behold, and beholding, set his own house in order. The time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the Universal Light which lightens all things. With the eye ever directed toward things fixed and immutable which neither injure nor are injured - these they cannot help imitating. But I quite admit the difficulty of believing that in every man there is an eye of the soul which by the right direction is re-illumined, and is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes.
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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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The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage.
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Wealth does not bring excellence, but that wealth comes from excellence.
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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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Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
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'But surely "blind" is just how you would describe men who have no true knowledge of reality, and no clear standard in their mind to refer to, as a painter refers to his model, and which they can study closely before they start laying down rules about what is fair or right or good where they are needed, or maintaining, as Guardians, any rules that already exist.' 'Yes, blind is just about what they are'
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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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The good is the beautiful.
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For when there are no words, it is very difficult to recognize the meaning of the harmony and rhythm, or to see any worldly object is imitated by them.
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No one should be discouraged, Theaetetus, who can make constant progress, even though it be slow.
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The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.