Plato Quotes
-
Geometry draws the soul towards truth.
-
Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored.
-
The good man is the only excellent musician, because he gives forth a perfect harmony not with a lyre or other instrument but with the whole of his life.
-
No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Thinking is the soul talking to itself.
-
Love is a grave mental illness.
-
Rhythm and harmony enter most powerfully into the inner most part of the soul and lay forcible hands upon it, bearing grace with them, so making graceful him who is rightly trained.
-
A State would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers.
-
Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.
-
One cannot make a slave of a free person, for a free person is free even in a prison.
-
Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.
-
Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence.
-
Wine fills the heart with courage.
-
Socrates said that, from above, the Earth looks like one of those twelve-patched leathern balls.
-
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.
-
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.
-
If the head and the body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.