Plato - Knowledge Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

View all Plato Quotes
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
Those who have knowledge are more confident than those who have no knowledge, and they are more confident after they have learned than before.

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

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

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

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
If it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.

Plato
The knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal, and [naught of] perishing and transient.

Plato
He who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink.

Plato
But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine. If he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal.

Plato
The most skillful physicians are those who, from their youth upwards, have combined with the knowledge of their art the greatest experience of disease; they had better not be robust in health, and should have had all manner of diseases in their own persons.

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
Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been.

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
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Plato
There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.

Plato
And so with the objects of knowledge: these derive from the Good not only their power of being known, but their very being and reality; and Goodness is not the same thing as being, but even beyond being, surpassing it in dignity and power.

Plato
The judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.

Plato
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

Plato
The absolute natures or kinds are known severally by the absolute idea of knowledge.

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

Plato
Arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.

Plato
And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.

Plato