Plato Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ.

Plato
If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.

Plato
How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, "How does love suit with age, Sophocles - are you still the man you were?" he replied, "Peace, most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."

Plato
To escape from evil we must be made as far as possible like God; and the resemblance consists in becoming just and holy and wise.

Plato
A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.

Plato
For when there are no words, it is very difficult to recognize the meaning of the harmony and rhythm, or to see any worldly object is imitated by them.

Plato
Do not great crimes and the spirit of pure evil spring out of a fullness of nature ruined by education rather than from any inferiority, whereas weak natures are scarcely capable of any very great good or very great evil?

Plato
When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.

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

Plato
Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant in order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together.

Plato
We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

Plato
He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.

Plato
Astronomy tell us about the motions of the stars and sun and moon, and their relative swiftness.

Plato
Every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing.... There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any writing of mine dealing with this subject.

Plato
Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men.

Plato
In human affairs chance is almost everything.

Plato
SOC:...if arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing be taken away from any art, that which remains will not be much.

Plato
Poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.

Plato
I take it that our state, having been founded and built up on the right lines, is good in the complete sense of the word.

Plato
Motion... has many forms, and not one only; two of them are obvious enough even to wits no better than ours; and there are others, as I imagine, which may be left to wiser persons.

Plato
I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse.

Plato
All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate.

Plato
And if we are good, we are beneficent: for all good things are beneficial. Are they not?

Plato
This universe is called Cosmos, or order, not disorder or misrule.

Plato
But the race of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men, who, although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined, in their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things above was to be obtained by sight.

Plato
Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.

Plato
For as there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.

Plato
If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful.

Plato
True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable.

Plato
I can show you that the art of computation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.

Plato