Plato Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

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

Plato
And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they are ill- educated, become the worst?

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

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

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

Plato
In human affairs chance is almost everything.

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

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

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
People may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of only looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium.

Plato
We are concerned with that part of geometry which relates to war; for in pitching a camp, or taking up a position, or closing or extending the lines of an army, or any other maneuver, whether in actual battle or on a march, it will make all the difference whether a general is or is not a geometrician.

Plato
Fields and trees are not willing to teach me anything; but this can be effected by men residing in the city.

Plato
A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.

Plato
Such, Echecrates, was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man.

Plato
Not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise.

Plato
Harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees.

Plato
POLUS: O chaerephon, there are many arts among mankind which are experimental, and have their origin in experience, for experience makes the days of men to proceed according to art, and inexperience according to chance, and different persons in different ways are proficient in different arts, and the best persons in the best arts.

Plato
The good are like one another, and friends to one another; and... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing.

Plato
Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting.

Plato
Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like.

Plato
For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means?

Plato