Plato Quotes
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Excellence" is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act "rightly" because we are "excellent", in fact we achieve "excellence" by acting "rightly".
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Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
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Poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.
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Let brother help brother.
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Courage is knowing what not to fear.
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Anything worth knowing is already known and must be remembered and reclaimed by the soul.
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One cannot make a slave of a free person, for a free person is free even in a prison.
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I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
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I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools.
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The power to learn is present in everyone's soul, and the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body.
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The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
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For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them.
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For every man who has learned to fight in arms will desire to learn the proper arrangement of an army, which is the sequel of the lesson.
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Music is a defining element of character.
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For as there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.
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All loves should be simply stepping stones to the love of God. So it was with me; and blessed be his name for his great goodness and mercy.
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In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful -in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason -and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes.
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It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke.
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The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine.
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There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.
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Geometry draws the soul towards truth.
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A State would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers.
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By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name.
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The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.