Plato Quotes

365 Sourced Quotes

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
For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.

Plato
As you hope to prove your own great value to the state, and having proved it, to attain at once to absolute power, so do I indulge a hope that I shall be the supreme power over you, if I am able to prove my own great value to you.

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

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
Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the innermost soul and take strongest hold upon it

Plato
They assembled together and dedicated these as the first-fruits of their love to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims which are on every tongue—'know thyself' and 'Nothing overmuch.'

Plato
The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself.

Plato
As long as I draw breath and am able, I won't give up practicing philosophy.

Plato
Better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of all misfortune.

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

Plato
For our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives.

Plato
For it is obvious to everybody, I think, that this study [of astronomy] compels the soul to look upward and leads it away from things here to higher things.

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

Plato
There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric... But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art - he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.

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
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

Plato
But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?

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

Plato