Plato Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

Other people are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be troubled when that came for which they had all along been eagerly practicing.

Plato
He who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one's "uses base" for the sake of money; but this is not honourable.

Plato
The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.

Plato
There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen.

Plato
The points that I mean are length and shortness, excess and defect, with all of which the art of measurement is conversant.

Plato
SOC:."And so, Gorgias, you call arithmetic rhetoric." But I do not think that you really call arithmetic rhetoric any more than geometry would be so called by you.

Plato
In astronomy, as in geometry, we should employ problems, and let the heavens alone if we would approach the subject in the right way and so make the natural gift of reason to be of any real use.

Plato
The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.

Plato
The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown.

Plato
Love' is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.

Plato
No man's nature is able to know what is best for the social state of man; or, knowing, always able to do what is best.

Plato
If we are to keep our flock at the highest pitch of excellence, there should be as many unions of the best of both sexes, and as few of the inferior as possible, and that only the offspring of the better unions should be kept.

Plato
It is fear and terror that make all men brave, except the philosophers. Yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice.

Plato
Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants.

Plato
If we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself.

Plato
Can we deny that a warrior should have a knowledge of arithmetic?

Plato
The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit.

Plato
Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.

Plato
To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.

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

Plato
In the world of knowledge, the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with effort.

Plato
Where reverence is, there is fear; for he who has a feeling of reverence and shame about the commission of any action, fears and is afraid of an ill reputation.

Plato
Even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom.

Plato
As to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?-he whom love touches not walks in darkness.

Plato
The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.

Plato
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.

Plato
All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue.

Plato
They ought to be gentle to their friends and dangerous to their enemies.

Plato
The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.

Plato
There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.

Plato