Plato Quotes
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States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.
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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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The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
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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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Those having torches will pass them on to others.
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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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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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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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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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Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong … And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.
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Love is a serious mental disease.
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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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A written discourse on any subject is bound to contain much that is fanciful.
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All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate.
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The wolf cares not, how many the sheep be.
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One man cannot practice many arts with success.
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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 heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
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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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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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But if with your mind's eye you regard the absolute great and these many great things in the same way, will not another great appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great?
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Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
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Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year, for it is wrong to add fire to fire.