Plato Quotes
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It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.
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Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter. Said to have been inscribed above the door of Plato's Academy.
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He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
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We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
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Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.
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The god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it's almost impossible to stamp out.
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No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.
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The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality.
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A written discourse on any subject is bound to contain much that is fanciful.
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The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
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If in a discussion of many matters ... we are not able to give perfectly exact and self-consistent accounts, do not be surprised: rather we would be content if we provide accounts that are second to none in probability.
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Just as things in a picture, when viewed from a distance, appear to be all in one and the same condition and alike.
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And is it not true that in like manner a leader of the people who, getting control of a docile mob, does not withhold his hand from the shedding of tribal blood, but by the customary unjust accusations brings a citizen into court and assassinates him, blotting out a human life, and with unhallowed tongue and lips that have tasted kindred blood, banishes and slays and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands.
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To escape from evil we must be made as far as possible like God; and the resemblance consists in becoming just and holy and wise.
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It is correct to make a priority of young people, taking care that they turn out as well as possible.
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The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
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One man cannot practice many arts with success.
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We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
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I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse.
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According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.
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More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.
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The wolf cares not, how many the sheep be.
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Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state.
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Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.