Plato - Man Quotes

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

Plato
Your pride has been too much for the pride of your admirers; they were numerous and high-spirited, but they have all run away, overpowered by your superior force of character; not one of them remains. And I want you to understand the reason why you have been too much for them. You think that you have no need of them or of any other man, for you have great possessions and lack nothing, beginning with the body, and ending with the soul.

Plato
Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

Plato
For though a man should be a complete unbeliever in the being of gods; if he also has a native uprightness of temper, such persons will detest evil in men; their repugnance to wrong disinclines them to commit wrongful acts; they shun the unrighteous and are drawn to the upright.

Plato
O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the gods, know that if you become worse, you shall go to worse souls, or if better to the better... In every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven.

Plato
That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless

Plato
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

Plato
In every man there is an eye of the soul, which...is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen.

Plato
If a man, fixing his attention on these and the like difficulties, does away with ideas of things and will not admit that every individual thing has its own determinate idea which is always one and the same, he will have nothing on which his mind can rest; and so he will utterly destroy the power of reasoning.

Plato
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.

Plato
For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice.

Plato
No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well.

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
The soul takes nothing with her to the other world but her education and culture; and these, it is said, are of the greatest service or of the greatest injury to the dead man, at the very beginning of his journey thither.

Plato
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

Plato
For what should a man live, if not for the pleasures of discourse?

Plato
Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labor, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

Plato
Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.

Plato
Oligarchy: A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.

Plato
Let there be one man who has a city obedient to his will, and he might bring into existence the ideal polity about which the world is so incredulous.

Plato
Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away.... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons hiom.

Plato
What is better adapted than the festive use of wine in the first place to test and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is there cheaper or more innocent?

Plato
Solon was under a delusion when he said that a man when he grows old may learn many things — for he can no more learn much than he can run much; youth is the time for any extraordinary toil.

Plato
Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this [live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth].

Plato
No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.

Plato
What is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a woman's life, and thirty in a man's?

Plato
Socrates, I shall not accuse you as I accuse others, of getting angry and cursing me when I tell them to drink the poison imposed by the authorities. I know you on the contrary in your time here to be the noblest and gentlest and best man of all who ever came here; and now I am sure you are not angry with me, for you know who are responsible, but with them.
Spoken by Socrates' gaoler

Plato
There is nothing so delightful as the hearing, or the speaking of truth. For this reason, there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive.

Plato
All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

Plato
Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

Plato