Plato Quotes
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No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
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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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We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in the idle fancy that we already know -- or that it is of no use seeking to know what we do not know.
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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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There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.
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And a democracy, I suppose, comes into being when the poor, winning the victory, put to death some of the other party, drive out others, and grant the rest of the citizens an equal share in both citizenship and offices.
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Only the dead have seen the end of war.
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Do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, near and distant, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other? If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful.
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It is impossible to conceive of many without one.
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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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If we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself.
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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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Adultery is the injury of nature.
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The right question is usually more important than the right answer.
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In the world of knowledge, the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with effort.
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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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To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible.
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Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.
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The one who learns and learns and doesn't practice is like the one who plows and plows and never plants.
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Be kind. Every person you meet is fighting a difficult battle.
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Wisdom is a blaze, kindled by a leaping spark.
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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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Train children not by compulsion but as if they were playing.
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No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.