Plato Quotes
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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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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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The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
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Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity - I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.
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The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
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You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my way.
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Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.
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The god, O men, seems to me to be really wise; and by his oracle to mean this, that the wisdom of this world is foolishness and of none effect.
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Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.
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Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and pursuits are dishonourable and evil.
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This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.
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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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Art has no end but its own perfection.
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...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty.
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Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
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The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.
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To fear death, gentlemen, is no other then to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.
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Vision, in my view, is the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the Universe would ever have been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heavens. But as it is, the vision of day and night and of months and circling years has created the art of number and has given us not only the notion of Time but also means of research into the nature of the Universe. From these we have procured Philosophy in all its range, than which no greater boon ever has come or will come, by divine bestowal, unto the race of mortals.
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The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.
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A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
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Rhythm and melody enter into the soul of the well-instructed youth and produce there a certain mental harmony hardly obtainable in any other way. . . . thus music, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm.
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And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.
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The qualities of number appear to lead to the apprehension of truth.
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So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well.