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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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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Every unjust man is unjust against his will.
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To be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
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What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.
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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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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 good are not willing to rule either for the sake of money or of honor.
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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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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
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Health is a consumation of a love affair of all the organs of the body.
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We must, if we are to be consistent, and if we re to have a real pedigree herd, mate the best of our men with the best of our women as often as possible, and the inferior men with the inferior women as seldom as possible, and keep only the offspring of the best.
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Socrates: The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.Phaedrus: Clearly.Socrates: And what is well and what is badly-need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?
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I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
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Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants.
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Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
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The soul takes nothing with her to the other world but her education and culture; and these, it is said, are of the greatest service or of the greatest injury to the dead man, at the very beginning of his journey hither.
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It is better to be wise, and not to seem so, than to seem wise, and not be so; yet men, for the most part, desire the contrary.
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May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me.
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Friends should have all things in common.
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Haughtiness lives under the same roof with solitude.
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A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books.
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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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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.