Plato Quotes
-
Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.
-
The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
-
Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race.
-
Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year, for it is wrong to add fire to fire.
-
Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being.
-
Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.
-
Nothing in human affairs is worth any great anxiety.
-
It is not noble to return evil for evil, at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbors.
-
Wisdom is a blaze, kindled by a leaping spark.
-
Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.
-
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
-
There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.
-
A nation will prosper to the degree that it honors it's teachers.
-
The greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind, yet the mind and the body are one and should not be treated separately!
-
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
-
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.
-
We are too feeble and sluggish to make our way out to the upper limit of the air. If someone could reach the summit, or put on wings and fly aloft, when he put up his head he would see the world above, just as fishes see our world when they put up their heads out of the sea; and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognize that that is the true heaven.
-
If one sins against the laws of proportion and gives something too big to something too small to carry it - too big sails to too small a ship, too big meals to too small a body, too big powers to too small a soul - the result is bound to be a complete upset. In an outburst of hubris the overfed body will rush into sickness, while the jack-in-office will rush into the unrighteousness that hubris always breeds.
-
We understand why children are afraid of darkness ... but why are men afraid of light?
-
By the golden chain Homer meant nothing else than the sun.
-
The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.
-
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
-
When you feel grateful, you become great, and eventually attract great things.
-
As the proverb says, "a good beginning is half the business" and "to have begun well" is praised by all.