Plato Quotes
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That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.
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The true musician is attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre... for he truly has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged in the Dorian mode. Such a one makes me joyous with the sound of his voice, so eager am I in drinking in his words.
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Democracy passes into despotism.
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I fast for greater physical and mental efficiency.
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The true runner comes to the finish and receives the prize and is crowned.
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Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men.
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[Not enough is known about solid geometry] and for two reasons: in the first place, no government places value on it; this leads to a lack of energy in the pursuit of it, and it is difficult. In the second place, students cannot learn it unless they have a teacher. But then a teacher can hardly be found.
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Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.
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Cooking is a form of flattery....a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping.
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He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.
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The wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.
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...there are some who are naturally fitted for philosophy and political leadership, while the rest should follow their lead and let philosophy alone.
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Courage is knowing what to fear.
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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.
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You may be sure, dear Crito, that inaccurate language is not only in itself a mistake: it implants evil in men's souls.
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Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.
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One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers and men of ambition we described earlier on.
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The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
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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.
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Of all the things which a man has, next to the gods his soul is the most divine and most truly his own.
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Wonder is the beginning of the desire to know the beautiful and the good.
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Let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible. . . . For this is the way of happiness.
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Who are the true philosophers? Those whose passion is to love the truth.
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You cannot conceive the many without the one.