Plato quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Plato

Plato Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Plato on Wise Famous Quotes.

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.

Behold, he said, the wisdom of Socrates; he refuses to teach himself, and goes about learning of others, to whom he never even says Thank you.

And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they are ill- educated, become the worst?

Of the Greek authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has had the greatest influence.

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

Knowledge is the rediscovering of our own insight.

Your dog is your only philosopher.

Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself

Each citizen should play his part in the community according to his individual gifts.

Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.

a human being is the measure of all things. of the things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not.

Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself.

In order to seek one's own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary, everyday life.

We should not exercise the body without the joint assistance of the mind; nor exercise the mind without the joint assistance of the body.

I grow impatient at the length of your exordium.

Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.

The greater part of instruction is being reminded of things you already know.

He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse

Geometry existed before creation.

You wouldn't know him if I told you the name. HIPPIAS: But I know right now he's an ignoramus.

Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?

God is truth and light his shadow.

So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well.

Our need will be the real creator.

Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life.

When the music changes, the walls of the city shake.

He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act

Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

All men, well interrogated, answer well.

If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

All learning is in the learner, not the teacher.

All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

The most important stage of any enterprise is the beginning.

No one ever dies an atheist ...

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

Nothing ever is, everything is becoming.

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.

Those who reproach injustice do so because they are afraid not of doing it but of suffering it.

What then is the right way to live? Life should be lived as play.

And what do you say of lovers of wine ... they are glad of any pretext of drinking any wine

There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.

The most famous of them all was the overthrow of the island of Atlantis.

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.

Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.

From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life than that men count most happy, the life of victors at Olympia.

There are some who are naturally fitted for philosophy and political leadership, while the rest should follow their lead and let philosophy alone.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

The first step in learning is the destruction of human conceit.

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.

Repetitions. The Greek is in places very ungrammatical and intractable.

Knowledge is true opinion.

In a democracy only will the freeman of nature design to dwell.

Was not this ... what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom
to know what is known and what is unknown to us?

Democracy ... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning

Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

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

If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.

He who is a useful keeper of anything is also a better thief.

Lessons, however, that enter the soul against its will never grow roots and will never be preserved inside it.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

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

When you swear, swear seriously and solemnly, but at the same time with a smile, for a smile is the twin sister of seriousness.

The first and best victory is to conquer self

If the head and the body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul.

We become what we contemplate.

No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

The prison of lust is just that very one of which the soul shuts the doors upon herself; for each act of indulgence is the shooting of a fresh bolt.

To win over your bad self is the grandest and foremost of victories.

For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet

Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul

He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

Necessity is literally the mother of invention.

States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers.

We are bound to our bodies like an oyster to its shell.

When I kiss Agathon my soul is on my lips, where it comes, poor thing, hoping to cross over.

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

Ignorance: the root of all evil.

Fly from the company of the wicked
fly and turn not back.

Science is nothing but perception.

Wonder is the beginning of the desire to know the beautiful and the good.

Don't force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.

No human thing is of serious importance.

It is beautiful to wish to add another's light to your own.

Are not they temperate from a kind of intemperance?

The laws of democracy remain a dead letter, its freedom is anarchy, its equality the equality of unequals

The physician, to the extent he is a physician, considers only the good of the patient in what he prescribes, and his own not at all

Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was every granted by the gods to man.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.