Plato Quotes
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A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.
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The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
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Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.
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They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
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If the study of all these sciences which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.
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Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument.
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Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.
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Their military training will ensure success in war, but they must maintain unity by not allowing the state to grow to large, and by ensuring that the measures for promotion and demotion from one class to another are carried out. Above all they must maintain the educational system unchanged; for on education everything else depends, and it is an illusion to imagine that mere legislation without it can effect anything of consequence.
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When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war.
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Shall we not, then, lay down a law, in the first place, that boys shall abstain altogether from wine till their eighteenth year, thereby teaching that it is wrong to add fire to fire, as through a funnel, pouring it into their body and soul before they proceed to the labor of life, thus exercising a caution as to the maddening habits of youth.
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This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
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Each living creature is said to be alive and to be the same individual - as for example someone is said to be the same person from when he is a child until he comes to be an old man. And yet, if he's called the same, that's despite the fact that he's never made up from the same things, but is always being renewed, and losing what he had before, whether it's hair, or flesh, or bones, or blood, in fact the whole body.
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Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
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And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
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Writing is the geometry of the soul.
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Don't ask a poet to explain himself. He cannot.
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A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality.
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We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
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We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.
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The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage.
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To begin is the most important part of any quest and by far the most courageous.
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How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
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Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
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Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.