Plato (348-347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. In Athens, Plato founded the Academy, a philosophical school where he taught the philosophical doctrines that would later became known as Platonism.
Here is A selection of some of Plato most famous quotes. Plato Quotes on Self, Education, Knowledge, Success and Wisdom. Plato Quotes on Love Symposium, Poetry, Reality and The soul. Quotes on Love & Life by Plato.
Plato Famous Quotes and Sayings
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 price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.
Love is a serious mental disease.
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Those who tell the stories rule society.
I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts.
There is truth in wine and children.
And when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment.
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.
Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.
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.
The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
You should not honor men more than truth.
A house that has a library in it has a soul.
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Character is simply habit long continued.
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.
Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.
You're my Star, a stargazer too, and I wish that I were Heaven, with a billion eyes to look at you!
Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.
"Excellence" is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act "rightly" because we are "excellent", in fact we achieve "excellence" by acting "rightly".
The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died.
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.
A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.
Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.
For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.
Writing is the geometry of the soul.
Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?
Nothing beautiful without struggle.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
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.
Love is the pursuit of the whole.
The first and best victory is to conquer self.
If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.
True friendship can exist only between equals.
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.
For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.
Books are immortal sons defying their sires.
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.
Man is a being in search of meaning.
No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.
How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.
The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.
No human thing is of serious importance.
All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
A dog has the soul of a philosopher.
He whom loves touches not walks in darkness.
All is flux, nothing stays still.
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
Knowledge is the food of the soul.
Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.
Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
Ideas are the source of all things.
Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.
Philosophy is the highest music.
Those who don't know must learn from those who do.
Time is the moving image of reality.
Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.
Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.
Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being.
Is there a perfect world?
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.
the unexamined life is not worth living.
The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
He feels particularly ashamed if ever he is seen by his lovers to be invovled in something dishonourable.
Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
Let parents then bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit of reverence.
Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.
The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.
We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
All learning has an emotional base.
He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse.
We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it.
But Above all things truth beareth away the victory.
Be kind, because everyone is having a really hard time.
To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
Reality is created by the mind. We can change our reality by changing our mind.
Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
The right question is usually more important than the right answer.
We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
Better to complete a small task well, than to do much imperfectly.
Welcome out of the cave, my friend. It's a bit colder out here, but the stars are just beautiful.
Don't force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.
A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality.
The one who learns and learns and doesn't practice is like the one who plows and plows and never plants.
Poverty doesn't come because of the decrease of wealth but because of the increase of desires.
If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
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