Plato Quotes
-
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.
-
Who are the true philosophers? Those whose passion is to love the truth.
-
Time on its back bears all things far away - Full many a challenge is wrought by many a day - Shape, fortune, name, and nature all decay.
-
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.
-
... 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.
-
In order to seek one's own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary, everyday life.
-
Through obedience learn to command.
-
The god, O men, seems to me to be really wise; and by his oracle to mean this, that the wisdom of this world is foolishness and of none effect.
-
There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.
-
To a good man nothing that happens is evil.
-
Music has the capacity to touch the innermost reaches of the soul and music gives flight to the imagination.
-
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.
-
Be kind, for everyone is having a hard battle.
-
What essence is to generation, that truth is to belief.
-
Upon consideration of the central question of the moon's toughness there can be little doubt. It is hella tough.
-
If a man says that it is right to give every one his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one.
-
Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.
-
Love is of something, and that which love desires is not that which love is or has; for no man desires that which he is or has. And love is of the beautiful, and therefore has not the beautiful. And the beautiful is the good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love also wants and desires the good.
-
The true lover of learning then must his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth.... He whose desires are drawn toward knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasures I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one ... Then how can he who has the magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all times and all existence, think much of human life He cannot. Or can such a one account death fearful No indeed.
-
Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.
-
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.