Plato Quotes
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The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.
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Music is that which takes silence and brings it to life.
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Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest hold upon it.
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Necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
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To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
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Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.
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Time is the moving imago of the unmoving eternity.
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Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
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Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life.
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To be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
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Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.
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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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Athenian men, I respect and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you.
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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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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
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We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it.
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I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them.
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The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies... they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.
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For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
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Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or anything better than cohesion and unity?
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The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown.
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And tell him it's quite true that the best of the philosophers are of no use to their fellows; but that he should blame, not the philosophers, but those who fail to make use of them.
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May not the wolf, as the proverb says, claim a hearing?
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... the good are not willing to rule either for the sake of money or of honor.