Plato Quotes
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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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To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.
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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.
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Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.
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Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting.
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Lessons, however, that enter the soul against its will never grow roots and will never be preserved inside it.
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To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.
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No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
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A nation will prosper to the degree that it honors it's teachers.
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The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of God.
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Writing is the geometry of the soul.
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Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.
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When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
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Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed by the masses.
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Madness is a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.
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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.
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Perfect wisdom has four parts: Wisdom, the principle of doing things aright. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.
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If you think your child's academic studies are more important than the arts, think again.
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Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.
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As the proverb says, "a good beginning is half the business" and "to have begun well" is praised by all.
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Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings... the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art... So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense... madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.
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By the golden chain Homer meant nothing else than the sun.
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Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love - all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce.
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I prefer nothing, unless it is true.