Plato Quotes
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My good friend, you are a citizen of Athens, a city which is very great and very famous for its wisdom and power - are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?
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Haughtiness lives under the same roof with solitude.
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Just as bees make honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so do the wise profit from the most difficult of experiences.
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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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If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.
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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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And once we have given our community a good start,' I pointed out, ' the process will be cumulative. By maintaining a sound system of education you produce citizens of good character, and citizens of sound character, with the advantage of a good education, produce in turn children better than themselves and better able to produce still better children in their turn, as can be seen with animals.
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Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?
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All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue.
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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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Give me a different set of mothers and I will give you a different world.
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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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If it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.
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Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like.
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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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For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
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When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has the eye to contemplate the vision.
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I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts.
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Life should be lived as play.
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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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Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind.
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Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large.
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Arrogance is ever accompanied by folly.
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The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.