Top 620 Plato And Socrates Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Plato calls complacency the companion of loneliness.

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.

I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates when he said...I drank what?

If Christianity was morality, Socrates would be the Saviour.

When people asked Socrates, ‘What is wisdom?’ he always gave the same answer: ‘I don’t know’. In fact, Socrates never claimed to know much of anything except how to ask questions. And by asking questions, he would prove to other people that they didn’t know what they thought they knew.

Plato's cave is full of freaks.

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?

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

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

It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.

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.

I conceived 'All Is Song' as a modernised, loosely interpreted version of Socrates's life.

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

Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living.

Socrates should have written comics.

Socrates said, "Those who want fewest things are nearest to the gods.

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

Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.

Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like. v One could wish no easier death than that of Socrates, calmly discussing philosophy with his friends; one could fear nothing worse than that of Jesus, dying in torment, among the insults, the mockery, the curses of the whole nation. In the midst of these terrible sufferings, Jesus prays for his cruel murderers. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Christ are those of a God.

Plato's world of ideas is beautiful.

In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social.

Socrates claimed famously that one never loses by doing the right thing. Stephen Post and his contributors claim, a little less boldly, that at least the generous will, probably, stay healthy—and, improving on Socrates, they support this claim with careful empirical science, impressive for its comprehensive detail. Here ethics and religion join science and enjoin us to be more caring and healthy. A seminal work, with an urgent message.

Not only were the Jews expecting the birth of a Great King, a Wise Man and a Saviour, but Plato and Socrates also spoke of the Logos and of the Universal Wise Man 'yet to come'. Confucius spoke of 'the Saint'; the Sibyls, of a 'Universal King'; the Greek dramatist, of a saviour and redeemer to unloose man from the 'primal eldest curse'. All these were on the Gentile side of the expectation. What separates Christ from all men is that first He was expected; even the Gentiles had a longing for a deliverer, or redeemer. This fact alone distinguishes Him from all other religious leaders.

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?

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.

The world's a puzzle; no need to make sense out of it." - Socrates

In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.

A Socrates in every classroom.

He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.

Plato was a bore.

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

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

Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

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

I read a lot of Socrates in the off-season. Don't print that, or it'll ruin my rep.

Socrates... Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'd Wisest of men.

For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.

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

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

Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae, bugbears to frighten children.

Plato, quite decadently, wore an earring while young.

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

Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing - the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god.

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!

It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.

Plato wove historical fact into literary myth.

Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.

To be is to do - Socrates To do is to be - Sartre Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra

Philosophers have a long tradition of marrying stupid women, from Socrates on. They think it clever.

Unlike Churchill, I have no plans to shape history. . . . Socrates gave advice

All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

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

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.

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.

I hear Socrates saying that the best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst.

Do you guys like impressions? "Why?" That was Socrates.

Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.