Plato Quotes
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Democracy passes into despotism.
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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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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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In order to seek one's own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary, everyday life.
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Wonder is the beginning of the desire to know the beautiful and the good.
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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.
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When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.
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If the head and the body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul.
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Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.
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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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There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.
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Socrates said that, from above, the Earth looks like one of those twelve-patched leathern balls.
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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.
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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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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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Thinking is the soul talking to itself.
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At the touch of love, everyone is a poet.
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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.
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Be kind, for everyone is having a hard battle.
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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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You get to know someone better by playing for an hour than by talking for a year.
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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.
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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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You cannot conceive the many without the one.