Plato Quotes (310 Quotes)


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

    Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

    Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

    Time carries off all things wouldst thou exchange - Name, looks, nature, luck Just give time full range

    He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.


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

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

    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.

    Love will make men dare to die for their beloved -love alone and women as well as men.

    You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

    Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

    Only the dead have seen the end of war.

    No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

    For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

    Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.

    For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation

    Time on its back bears all things far away - Full many a challenge is wrought by many a day - Shape, fortune, name, and nature all decay

    Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

    Man - a being in search of meaning.

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

    The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

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

    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.

    When speaking of divine perfection, we signify that God is just and true and loving, the author of order, not disorder, of good, not evil. We signify that he is justice, that he is truth, that he is love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of.

    Self conquest is the greatest of victories.

    To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

    Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.

    The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

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

    At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

    A man left gold another took it left a noose, So the first hanged himself having but life to lose

    I think a man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life

    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.

    We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

    I have good hope that there is something after death.

    When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.

    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.

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

    The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

    He is a fool who cannot be angry but he is a wise man who will not.

    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?

    Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

    The good is the beautiful.

    The first and the best victory is to conquer self.

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

    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.

    Attention to health is life greatest hindrance.

    Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

    The fact that he Fitzgerald asked for authority that he probably already had, but wanted spelled out, makes it arguable that he had run into something rather quickly,

    False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.


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