Plato Quotes
-
Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?
-
You need some knowledge to recognize knowledge, so where does the first knowledge come from?
-
Give me a different set of mothers and I will give you a different world.
-
According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.
-
When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.
-
Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.
-
Let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.
-
The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.
-
One cannot make a slave of a free person, for a free person is free even in a prison.
-
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.
-
The human race will have no respite from evils until those who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities become real philosophers.
-
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.
-
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
-
A man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.
-
The true runner comes to the finish and receives the prize and is crowned.
-
And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously.
-
Self conquest is the greatest of victories.
-
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.
-
Wine fills the heart with courage.
-
...there are some who are naturally fitted for philosophy and political leadership, while the rest should follow their lead and let philosophy alone.
-
Thinking is the soul talking to itself.
-
I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.
-
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.
-
Harmony sinks deep into the recesses of the soul and takes its strongest hold there, bringing grace also to the body & mind as well. Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything. It is the essence of order.