Plato Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

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
Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.

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
No one is so cowardly that Love could not inspire him to heroism.

Plato
For this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.

Plato
When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has the eye to contemplate the vision.

Plato
He who advises a sick man, whose manner of life is prejudicial to health, is clearly bound first of all to change his patient's manner of life.

Plato
Violent pleasures which reach the soul through the body are generally of this sort-they are reliefs of pain.

Plato
Most people affirm pleasure to be the good, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge.

Plato
That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.

Plato
Men of sound sense have Law for their god, but men without sense Pleasure.

Plato
When man is not properly trained, he is the most savage animal on the face of the globe.

Plato
As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion. And as intellect is to opinion, so is science to belief.

Plato
Great is the issue at stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one be profited if, under the influence of money or power, he neglect justice and virtue?

Plato
We must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things.

Plato
Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors.

Plato
We are too feeble and sluggish to make our way out to the upper limit of the air. If someone could reach the summit, or put on wings and fly aloft, when he put up his head he would see the world above, just as fishes see our world when they put up their heads out of the sea; and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognize that that is the true heaven...

Plato
All soul is immortal. For that which is always in movement is immortal; that which moves something else, and is moved by something else, in ceasing from movement ceases from living. So only that which moves itself, because it does not abandon itself, never stops moving. But it is also source and first principle of movement for the other things which move.

Plato
If you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange.

Plato
Vain would be the attempt of telling all the figures of them circling as in a dance, and their juxtapositions, and the return of them in their revolutions upon themselves, and their approximations...

Plato