Plato Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

Observe that open loves are held to be more honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honourable.

Plato
Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them.

Plato
The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good.

Plato
We are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster to his shell.

Plato
For a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him.

Plato
I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that the only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom.

Plato
ATHENIAN STRANGER: They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, molds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial.

Plato
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.

Plato
He who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink.

Plato
That there might be some visible measure of their relative swiftness and slowness as they proceeded in their eight courses, God lighted a fire, which we now call the sun, in the second from the earth of these orbits...

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
Desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none, or very slight ones.

Plato
The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage.

Plato
The knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal, and [naught of] perishing and transient.

Plato
I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block of wax... and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we forget or do not know.

Plato
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.

Plato
When I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, having in himself a fairer harmony than that of the lyre.

Plato
Consider how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed.

Plato
He who has not contemplated the mind of nature which is said to exist in the stars, and gone through the previous training, and seen the connection of music with these things, and harmonized them all with laws and institutions, is not able to give a reason of such things as have a reason.

Plato
SOC: And all arithmetic and calculations have to do with number?
GLAUCON: Yes.
SOC: And they appear to lead the mind towards truth?
GLAUCON: Yes, in a very remarkable manner.

Plato
I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them.

Plato
Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.

Plato
I call upon God, and beg him to be our savior out of a strange and unwanted enquiry, and to bring us to the heaven of probability.

Plato
If it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.

Plato
Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for its sake.

Plato
Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserve.

Plato
Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?

Plato
In things which we know, everyone will trust us... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.

Plato
The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets.

Plato
Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.

Plato