-
What essence is to generation, that truth is to belief.
Plato -
Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
Plato
-
May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me.
Plato -
Romantic Art: The Hearts Awakening - Bouguereau At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
Plato -
Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
Plato -
Of all the things which a man has, next to the gods his soul is the most divine and most truly his own.
Plato -
Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he had no desire for that of which he feels no want.
Plato -
There should be no element of slavery in learning. Enforced exercise does no harm to the body, but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children's lessons take the form of play.
Plato
-
... our purpose in founding our state was not to promote the happiness of a single class, but, so far as possible, of the whole community. Our idea was that we were most likely to justice in such a community, and so be able to decide the question we are trying to answer. We are therefore at the moment trying to construct what we think is a happy community by securing the happiness not of a select minority, but of a whole.
Plato -
Thinking is the soul talking to itself.
Plato -
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.
Plato -
He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.
Plato -
There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.
Plato -
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
Plato
-
So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well.
Plato -
The honour of parents is a fair and noble treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth and honour, and to leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonourable.
Plato -
I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that the only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom.
Plato -
Wine fills the heart with courage.
Plato -
To a good man nothing that happens is evil.
Plato -
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.
Plato
-
We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.
Plato -
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.
Plato -
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 hiom.
Plato -
When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil.
Plato