Top 361 Plato Quotes & Sayings

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

Was it Aristotle who said the human soul is composed of reason, will, and desire?” “No, that was Plato. Aristotle and Plato were as different as Mel Tormé and Bing Crosby. In any case, things were a lot simpler in the old days,” Komatsu said. “Wouldn’t it be fun to imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table?

In the Republic Plato presents a theory of personality. ... He speaks of three faculties, the appetitive, the ambitious, and the rational. ... The most dangerous faculty according to Plato is the appetitive for it bonds the soul to the senses and the realm of sense objects.

Plato's world of ideas is beautiful.

Plato assumes somehow that government is a way in which you put unselfish and ungreedy men in charge of selfish and greedy men. But government is an institution whereby the people who have the greatest drive to get power over their fellow men, get in a position of controlling them. Look at the record of government. Where are these philosopher kings that Plato supposedly was trying to develop?

Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.

Plato calls complacency the companion of loneliness.

Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,--at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories.

Plato stands for the union of truth and goodness in the supreme idea of God.

Plato felt that a complete reconstruction of society's political program was needed.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Behold Plato's man!"

My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.

The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.

Plato rarely if ever states anything about himself clearly.

Said Aristotle unto Plato, 'Have another sweet potato?' Said Plato unto Aristotle, 'Thank you, I prefer the bottle.'

I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.

Plato's dialogues bear at least some similarities to the classical plays.

Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.

Ways of loving from a distance, mating without even touching-Amor platonicus! The ladder of love one is expected to climb higher and higher, elating the Self and the Other. Plato clearly regards any actual physical contact as corrupt and ignoble because he thinks the true goal of Eros is beauty. Is there no beauty in sex? Not according to Plato. He is after `more sublime pursuits.' But if you ask me, I think Plato's problem, like those of many others, was that he never got splendidly laid.

It must be so, Plato, thou reason'st well!

You two go and have fun. I have plenty of stuff here to entertain me with. Plato rocks! (Tory)

Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets.

It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at those schools!

With regards to political enemies Plato had a kill-and-banish principle. ... In interpreting it , modern-day Platonists are clearly disturbed by it, even as they make elaborate attempts to defend Plato.

[Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato.... He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato] said, " Aristotle has kicked us off, just as chickens do their mother after they have been hatched.

Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.

First and foremost, note that Plato always wrote dialogues, and never attempted to produce a theoretical or scientific treatise. This is a big clue for me. From beginning to end, Plato was aware of the limits of theoretical and technical reasoning, and his dialogues are a massive exploration.

Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato , interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato , looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge.

Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure.

There is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on Plato's secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no 'Bible,' nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic - but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life - a Greek life which he repudiated - without an Aristophanes!

I had no idea what philosophy was until I went to college at UBC. I first read Hume and Plato, so naturally I was under the misapprehension that philosophers are trying to figure out what is true, and that contemporary philosophers are mainly trying to figure out what is true about the mind. Of course Hume and Plato were trying to do that, hence my misapprehension.

If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini.

Plato was a bore.

'Matisse and Picasso' is a little like Plato after Socrates. Socrates only taught in words. He didn't write. And after that, you had Plato and Aristotle to write about what he had said. I write about them because they didn't write about them.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Plato was continually saying to Xenocrates, "Sacrifice to the Graces.

Epicurus had rage and envy of Plato's superior style.

The base emotions Plato banned have left a radio-active and not radiant land.

Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another.

Plato's concern is not just an intellectual issue, but it is knitted with emotional life as well.

And Numenius, the Pythagorean philosopher, expressly writes: 'For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.'

Being in love, as both Plato and David Bowie have pointed out, is horrible.

Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.Socrates: How so, Plato?Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is asculptor.Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they haveno need to be reminded.Plato: That is correct.Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.

When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

Aristotle was by far a less able thinker than Plato ... he was completely overwhelmed by Plato.

All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.

Plato affirmed that the soul was immortal and clothed in many bodies successively.

Plato was only a Bernard Shaw who unfortunately made his jokes in Greek.

Many receive a criticism and think it is fine; think they got their money's worth; think well of the teacher for it, and then go on with their work just the same as before. That is the reason much of the wisdom of Plato is still locked up in the pages of Plato.

Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato.

Plato, quite decadently, wore an earring while young.

Plato's cave is full of freaks.

Socrates had a student named Plato, Plato had a student named Aristotle, and Aristotle had a student named Alexander the Great.

Plotinus is a neo-Platonist, so he would encourage us to go back to Plato.

Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.

Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as Plato diluted by common sense. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily.

To Plato the desire for excessive and special foods ... is a hindrance to the soul's attainment of intelligence.

My curiosity, alas, is not the kind that can be satisfied by objective knowledge. Plato said that opinion is worthless and that only knowledge counts, which is a neat formulation. ... But melancholy Danes from the northern mists understand that opinion is all there is. The great questions transcend fact, and discourse is a process of personality. Knowledge cannot respond to knowledge. And wisdom? Is it not opinion refined, opinion killed and resuscitated upward? Maybe Plato would have agreed with this.

My father was a dreamy fellow - he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.