Plato Quotes
Most popular Plato Quotes
Love is blind.
To be is to do.
Truth is its own reward.
Advice is a sacred thing.
Even the gods love jokes.
Excellent things are rare.
Life must be lived as play.
Learning is only remembering.
The true creator is necessity.
Time is the image of eternity.
Courage is a kind of salvation.
Knowledge is the food of the soul.
Man - a being in search of meaning.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Mankind — beings in search of meaning.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
Let no one ignorant of geometry enter my door.
At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.
Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.
The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.
Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
When the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself.
In time shape, fortune, name, and nature all decay.
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
To do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.
Be kind, for every man you meet is fighting a hard battle.
The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
Men cannot be trusted always to know their true rational interests.
Hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants.
Reason has a natural and rightful authority over desire and affection.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
If a man be endued with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.
Never discourage any man who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
The Earth viewed from above resembles a ball sewn from twelve pieces of skin.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and life to everything.
Human behaviour flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the world with evil.
There are three classes of men — lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, lovers of gain.
You can discover more about a man in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
There are three classes of people: lovers of wisdom, lovers of humor, lovers of gain.
The direction in which education starts a man (person), will determine his future life.
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
The passionate are like men standing on their heads; they see all things the wrong way.
Until philosophers are kings . . . cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race.
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have least wit are the greatest babblers.
Wise people talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
A wise man talks because he has something to say; fools, because they would like to say something.
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
There is no greater nor keener pleasure than that of bodily love - and none which is more irrational.
Kings are never without flatterers to seduce them; ambition to deprave them; and desires to corrupt them.
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
The most virtuous of all men is he that contents himself with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
Human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and the pursuit of the whole is called love.
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
The punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to take part in the government is to live under a government of bad rulers.
Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
There are three arts which are concerned with all things; one which uses, another which makes, a third which imitates them.
Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State... when modes of music change, the State always changes with them.
Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself, and not upon others, has adopted the very best plan for living happily.
Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow humans.
Mankind will never see an end of trouble until ... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power ... become lovers of wisdom.
Health, beauty, vigor, riches, and all the other things called good, operate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust, as they do as benefits to the just.
A man who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to a man who is of an opposite disposition, youth and age are equally a burden.
One who intends to be a great man ought to love neither himself nor his own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by himself or by another.
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by the same Creator, and however we deceive ourselves, as dear to God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul and take the strongest hold upon it.
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.... This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them.
Do not teach children learning by force and harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be the better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
The judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.
No physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere money-maker.
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
Perfect wisdom hath 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 flying danger, but meeting it; and temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
