Plato Quotes
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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 hiom.
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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.
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Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
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Knowledge is the rediscovering of our own insight.
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Upon consideration of the central question of the moon's toughness there can be little doubt. It is hella tough.
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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.
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Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.
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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.
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These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.
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To think truly is noble and to be deceived is base.
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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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Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.
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Courage is knowing what to fear.
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Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?
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[The Cretans have] more wit than words.
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I should not like to say ... that any kind of knowledge is not to be learned; for all knowledge appears to be a good.
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Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils - no, nor the human race, as I believe - and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.
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There is no other start to philosophy but wonder.
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The mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because the new is always left in the place of the old.
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The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good.
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The prison of lust is just that very one of which the soul shuts the doors upon herself; for each act of indulgence is the shooting of a fresh bolt.
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The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.
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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.
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Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.