Plato Plato Quotations

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

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.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.

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.

They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

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.

Self conquest is the greatest of victories.

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

A fit of laughter, which has been indulged to excess, almost always produces a violent reaction.

And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.

Attention to health is life greatest hindrance.

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.

For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice.

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils - no, nor the human race, as I believe - and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.

The knowledge of which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal.

Truth is its own reward.

Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information - never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good - he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and pursuits are dishonourable and evil.

Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.

In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful -in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason -and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes.

Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.

Knowledge is true opinion.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Democracy passes into despotism.

Mathematics is like draughts in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.

The wisest have the most authority.

Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind.

He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

Science is nothing but perception.

No human thing is of serious importance.

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.

Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality.

Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been.

Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?

The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity - I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.

Thus 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.

And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves, then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven...Last of all he will be able to see the sun.

But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants.

Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

The honour of parents is a fair and noble treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth and honour, and to leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonourable.

God is not the author of all things, but of good only.

When the citizens of a society can see and hear their leaders, then that society should be seen as one.

And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors.

The orators and the despots have the least power in their cities ... since they do nothing that they wish to do, practically speaking, though they do whatever they think to be best.

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

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.

In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, How do you feel about love, Sophocles? are you still capable of it? to which he replied, Hush! if you please: to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master. I thought then, as I do now, that he spoke wisely. For unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions.

These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.

That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen.

Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter. Said to have been inscribed above the door of Plato's Academy.

Honesty is for the most par less profitable than dishonesty.

Let early education be a sort of amusement. You will then be better able to find out the natural bent.

It was Plato, according to Sosigenes, who set this as a problem for those concerned with these things, through what suppositions of uniform and ordered movements the appearances concerning the movements of the wandering heavenly bodies could be preserved.

The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.

The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of a bad man.

No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.

Arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.

The Earth is like one of those balls made of twelve pieces of skin.

Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.

I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.

For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.