Plato - Phaedo

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

Plato
It seems to me that whatever else is beautiful apart from asbsolute beauty is beautiful because it partakes of that absolute beauty, and for no other reason. Do you accept this kind of causality?

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

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
All who do evil and dishonorable things do them against their will.

Plato
Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life.

Plato
The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.

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
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
It is fear and terror that make all men brave, except the philosophers. Yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice.

Plato
Other people are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be troubled when that came for which they had all along been eagerly practicing.

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

Plato
I fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that the only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom.

Plato
I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools.

Plato
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

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
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 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
May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ.

Plato
This was the end, Echekrates, of our friend; a man of whom we may say that of all whom we met at that time he was the wisest and justest and best.
On the death of socrates

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

Plato
The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine.

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
Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are going to the god they serve.

Plato
Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument.

Plato