Top 983 Quotes & Sayings by Plato - Page 16

Until philosophers hold power, neither states nor individuals will have rest from trouble.

The doctors will treat those of your citizens whose physical and psychological constitution is good: as for the others, they will leave the unhealthy to die and those whose psychological constitution is incurably warped they will be put to death.

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.

All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue.

The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.

Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?

Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.

To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.

When two friends are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that we give real responses, but that we base our responses solely on what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows.

The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.

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

The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of bad men, and, growing like them, to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad.

Consider how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed.

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.

Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information - never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good - he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world.

The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch.

Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.

But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; - that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.

There is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not from the truth.

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.

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.

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.

No one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.

And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously.

So the state founded on natural principles is wise as a whole in virtue of the knowledge inherent in its smallest constituent class, which exercises authority over the rest. And the smallest class is the one which naturally possesses that form of knowledge which alone of all others deserves the title of wisdom.

So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey.

I have this tattooed on my left side! I love the saying and it's a perfect description of Karma, don't judge/discriminate and don't do to someone what you wouldn't want done to you.

It is correct to make a priority of young people, taking care that they turn out as well as possible.

By the golden chain Homer meant nothing else than the sun.

Those who are not schooled and practised in truth [who are not honest and upright men] can never manage aright the government, nor yet can those who spend their lives as closet philosophers; because the former have no high purpose to guide their actions, while the latter keep aloof from public life.

Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth... And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth?

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.

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

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.

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.

We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing.

Where reverence is, there is fear; for he who has a feeling of reverence and shame about the commission of any action, fears and is afraid of an ill reputation.

There is yet something remaining for the dead, and some far better thing for the good than for the evil.

Much sleep is not required by nature, either for our souls or bodies, or for the action in which they are concerned.

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.

The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.

Each living creature is said to be alive and to be the same individual - as for example someone is said to be the same person from when he is a child until he comes to be an old man. And yet, if he's called the same, that's despite the fact that he's never made up from the same things, but is always being renewed, and losing what he had before, whether it's hair, or flesh, or bones, or blood, in fact the whole body.

According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.

Love is a great spirit. Everything spiritual is in between god and mortal.

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.

That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen.

People regard the same things, some as just and others as unjust, - about these they dispute; and so there arise wars and fightings among them.

The love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another.

And tell him it's quite true that the best of the philosophers are of no use to their fellows; but that he should blame, not the philosophers, but those who fail to make use of them.

Is virtue something that can be taught?

Athenian men, I respect and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you.

All I would ask you to be thinking of is the truth and not Socrates.

[Not enough is known about solid geometry] and for two reasons: in the first place, no government places value on it; this leads to a lack of energy in the pursuit of it, and it is difficult. In the second place, students cannot learn it unless they have a teacher. But then a teacher can hardly be found.

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other then to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.

What essence is to generation, that truth is to belief.

The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good.

As a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there and setting him all aflutter, it waters the passages of the feathers and causes the wings to grow, and fills the soul of the loved one in his turn with love.

Where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government's lust for rule and the subjects' cowardice.

He who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one's "uses base" for the sake of money; but this is not honourable.

Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift.