Time For Plato Quotes

"There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot." Plato

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

"Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty." Plato

"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death." Plato

"The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not." Plato

"The wisest have the most authority." Plato

"Democracy passes into despotism." Plato

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

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

"Life must be lived as play." Plato

Plato: copy of portrait bust by Silanion

Plato ( 424/423 BC – 348/347 BC) was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle , Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.

Plato's sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts. Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, and mathematics.
Read more about Plato at Wikipedia

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

"Science is nothing but perception." Plato

"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery." Plato

"Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences." Plato

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

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

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something." Plato

"Necessity... the mother of invention." Plato

"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men." Plato

"The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile." Plato

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little." Plato

"We are twice armed if we fight with faith." Plato

"No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding." Plato

"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector." Plato

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

"Philosophy begins in wonder." Plato

"Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil." Plato

"Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails." Plato

"Your silence gives consent." Plato

"The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable." Plato

"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." Plato

"Only the dead have seen the end of war." Plato

"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous." Plato

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

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

"To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils." Plato

"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance." Plato

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet." Plato

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

"A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants." Plato

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

"Philosophy is the highest music." Plato

"Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another." Plato

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

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

"I shall assume that your silence gives consent." Plato

"Death is not the worst that can happen to men." Plato

"The good is the beautiful." Plato

"As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser." Plato

"Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself." Plato

"Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man." Plato

"If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals." Plato

"Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good." Plato

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

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." Plato

"Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety." Plato

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

"The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles." Plato

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

"It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn." Plato

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

"If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life." Plato

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

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." Plato

"There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good." Plato

"All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue." Plato

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

"This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are." Plato

"When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself." Plato

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

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

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

"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work." Plato

"I would fain grow old learning many things." Plato

"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." Plato

"There is no harm in repeating a good thing." Plato

"Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder." Plato

"For good nurture and education implant good constitutions." Plato

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

"Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly." Plato

"He was a wise man who invented beer." Plato

"No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return." Plato

"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter." Plato

"Courage is a kind of salvation." Plato

"They certainly give very strange names to diseases." Plato

"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life." Plato

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

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

"Courage is knowing what not to fear." Plato

"Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways." Plato

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

"When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them." Plato

"It is right to give every man his due." Plato

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

"The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless." Plato

"Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others." Plato

"Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do." Plato

"Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy." Plato

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

"Man - a being in search of meaning." Plato

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

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

"Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment." Plato

"Knowledge is true opinion." Plato

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

"The beginning is the most important part of the work." Plato

"Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good." Plato

"Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child." Plato

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

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

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

"Love is a serious mental disease." Plato

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

"A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers." Plato

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

"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history." Plato

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

"He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power." Plato

"There is no such thing as a lovers' oath." Plato

"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education." Plato

"One man cannot practice many arts with success." Plato

"Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom." Plato