Quotations - Plato

SolitaryRoad.com

Website owner:  James Miller

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Info ] [ Mail ]

Quotations --- Plato

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none, or very slight ones.

Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

Never discourage anyone... who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

You cannot conceive the many without the one.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

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

The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

Friends have all things in common.

The greatest penalty of evildoing - namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

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

The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination
and life to everything.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Love is a serious mental disease.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

There is truth in wine and children.

I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.

The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.

I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts.

According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with 4 arms, 4 legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.

Those who tell the stories rule society.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

You should not honor men more than truth.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Character is simply habit long continued.

“Excellence" is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice.
We do not act "rightly" because we are "excellent",
in fact we achieve "excellence" by acting "rightly".”

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.

The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died.

The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.

“…if a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.”

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

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

A house that has a library in it has a soul.

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

To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to man; but people dread it as though they were certain it is the greatest evil.

For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.

The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age.

Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.

The first and best victory is to conquer self.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

All is flux, nothing stays still.

In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society.

Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?

All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance.

I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.

The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

Is there a perfect world?

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.

Time is the moving image of reality.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

But Above all things truth beareth away the victory.

True friendship can exist only between equals.

Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.

Ideas are the source of all things.

A life without investigation is not worth living.

What if the man could see Beauty Itself, pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality, and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine,...the man becoming in that communion, the friend of God, himself immortal;...would that be a life to disregard?

We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it.

"Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.”

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 him.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Let parents then bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit of reverence.

All learning has an emotional base.

“…it’s better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just.”

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration, in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.

If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.

And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order and lends to all that is good and just and beautiful.

No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God.

Knowledge is the food of the soul.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

He was a wise man who invented beer.

You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken....Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up? ... We cannot .... Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts ....

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man's education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below.

And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man – whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.

“the only thing he ought to consider, if he does anything, is whether he does right or wrong, whether it is what a good man does or a bad man”

What a strange thing that which men call pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with what is thought to be its opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is almost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head.

The first and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.

He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.

Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?

Virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.

“...both wealth and concord decline as possessions become pursued and honored. And virtue perishes with them as well.”

It's not at all uncommon to find a person's desires compelling him to go against his reason, and to see him cursing himself and venting his passion on the source of the compulsion within him. It's as if there were two warring factions, with passion fighting on the side of reason. But I'm sure you won't claim that you had ever, in yourself or in anyone else, met a case of passion siding with his desires against the rational mind, when the rational mind prohibits resistance.

“not exact, but: the two most important questions are; who will teach the children? what will they teach them?”

Pleasure is the bait of sin.

And then, at this stage, every dictator comes up with the notorious and typical demand: he asks the people for bodyguards to protect him, the people's champion.

“this is the greatest good to man, to discourse daily on virtue, and other things which you have heard me discussing, examining both myself and others,”

A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books.

O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the Gods, know that if you become worse you shall go with the worse souls, or if better with the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer as one may fitly suffer in accordance with conduct. This is the justice of heaven.

“those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.”

The rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know.

Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.

“["F]or it's not possible," [Socrates] said, "for anybody to experience a greater evil than hating arguments. Hatred of arguments and hatred of human beings come about in the same way. For hatred of human beings arises from artlessly trusting somebody to excess, and believing that human being to be in every way true and sound and trustworthy, and then a little later discovering that this person is wicked and untrustworthy - and then having this experience again with another. And whenever somebody experiences this many times, and especially at the hands of just those he might regard as his most intimate friends and comrades, he then ends up taking offense all the time and hates all human beings and believes there's nothing at all sound in anybody.”

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.”

As it is, the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

Reality is created by the mind, we can change our reality by changing our mind.

A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.

Be kind. Every person you meet is fighting a difficult battle.

The right question is usually more important than the right answer.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

Don’t force you children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.

The first and the best victory is to conquer self.

The one who learns and learns and doesn’t practice is like one who plows and plows and never plants.

To begin is the most important part of any quest and by far the most courageous.

We become what we contemplate.

Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

Poverty doesn’t come because of the decrease of wealth but because of the increase of desires.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.

Enjoy life. There is plenty of time to be dead. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.

When you feel grateful, you become great, and eventually attract great things.

The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.

You should not honor men more than truth.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Happiness springs from doing good and helping others.

He who does not desire power is fit to hold it.

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow — even if that someone is yourself!

Welcome out of the cave my friend. It’s a bit colder out here, but the stars are just beautiful.

The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.

Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.

He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age.

Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

It is better to be wise and not seem so than to seem wise and not be so; yet men, for the most part, desire the contrary.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

One cannot make a slave of a free person for a free person is free even in prison.

False words are not only evil in themselves but they infect the soul with evil.

In an honest man there is always something of a child.

A house that has a library in it has a soul.

Access to power must be confined to those who are not in love with it.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being.

Those who tell the stories rule society.

You get to know someone better by playing for an hour than by talking for a year.

If we are to have any hope for the future, those who have lanterns must pass them on to others.

Just as bees make honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so do the wise profit from the most difficult of experiences.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick.

Everything changes and nothing stands still.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

No man should be angry with what is true.

Ignorance is the root cause of all difficulties.

To win over your bad self is the grandest and foremost of victories.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

No one ever dies an atheist.

Better a good enemy than a bad friend.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

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

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them by what amuses their minds.

True friendship can exist only between equals.

Better to complete a small task well, than to do much imperfectly.

Music has the capacity to touch the innermost reaches of the soul and music gives flight to imagination.

All learning is in the learner, not the teacher.

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

I know nothing more worthy of a man’s ambition than that his son be the best of men.

A tyrant ... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

The noblest of all studies is the study of what man is and what life he should lead.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of all misfortune.

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

There are three classes of men: lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

To a good man nothing that happens is evil.

A dog has the soul of a philosopher.

If you think your child’s academic studies are more important than the arts, think again.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.

Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.

If a man lacks education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

The purpose of education is to give to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all of the perfection of which they are capable.

Life should be lived as a play.

Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.

Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year.

He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act.

To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible.

Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.

To escape from evil we must be made as far as possible like God; and the resemblance consists in becoming just and holy and wise.

All wars are fought for the sake of getting money.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

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

Geometry existed before creation.

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding.

The laws of democracy remain a dead letter, its freedom is anarchy, its equality the equality of unequals.

Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.

Where love reigns, there’s no need for laws.

Nothing ever is, everything is becoming.

The first step in learning is the destruction of human conceit.

Music is to the mind as air is to the body.

The qualities which a man seeks in his beloved are those characteristics of his own soul, whether he knows it or not.

Anything worth knowing is already known and must be remembered and reclaimed by the soul.

The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics.

The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge.

I prefer nothing, unless it is true.

Maximize the power of the beliefs that strengthen you and neutralize those that weaken you.

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

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.

Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity.

I will prove by my life that my critics are liars.

You cannot go into the same water twice.

Don’t quarrel with your parents even if you are on the right.

We understand why children are afraid of darkness .... but why are men afraid of light?

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one’s own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

Knowledge is the rediscovering of our own insight.

The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.

The good is the beautiful.

Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them.

Follow your dream as long as you live, do not lessen the time of following desire, for wasting time is an abomination of the spirit.

No soul willfully does wrong.

A nation will prosper to the degree that it honors its teachers.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

Love is a grave mental illness.

Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule.

The seen is the changing, the unseen is the unchanging.

More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best suited to do, and nothing else.

You can’t do good if you don’t feel good.

The cause of all sins in every case lies in the person’s excessive love of self.

Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.

No one is so cowardly that Love could not inspire him to heroism.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

The good man is the only excellent musician, because he gives forth a perfect harmony not with a lyre or other instrument but with the whole of his life.

Music then is simply the result of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

Music gives a soul to the universe.

We are bound to our bodies like an oyster to its shell.

No one can escape his destiny.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.

Wonder is the beginning of the desire to know the beautiful and the good.

A man is not learned until he can read, write, and swim.

Integrity is your destiny — it is the light that guides your way.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

A wise ignorance is an essential part of knowledge.

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

To do injustice is the greatest of all evils.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Ideas are the source of all things.

Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the soul and take strongest hold on it.

Pleasure is the bait of sin.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

Knowledge of the soul is the only universal truth and the only wisdom — all other knowledge is transient.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.

Lessons, however, that enter the soul against its will never grow roots and will never be preserved inside it.

No one teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

Wealth and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

All thought begins with the recognition that something is out of place.

Music is a defining element of character.

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

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.

No evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose between two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.

The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of God.

Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.

All loves should be simply stepping stones to the love of God. So it was with me; and blessed be his name for his great goodness and mercy.

The man who has music in his soul will be most in love with the loveliest.

Seek truth while you are young, for if yo do not, it will later escape your grasp.

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

The wisest have the most authority.

I fast for greater physical ad mental efficiency.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

The cure of many diseases is unknown to physicians because they are ignorant of the whole ... For the part can never be well unless the whole is well.

Our love for our children springs from the soul’s greatest yearning for immortality.

Virtue is voluntary, vice is involuntary.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

The whole life of a philosopher is a preparation for death.

Fly from the company of the wicked — fly and turn not back.

No human thing is of serious importance.

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lessor.

We obtain better knowledge of a person during one hour’s play and games than by conversing with him for a whole year.

All of the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

The contemplation of beauty causes the soul to grow wings.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind.

Excellent things are rare.

The beginning is the most important part ... for that is the time character is being formed.

I’m trying to think, don’t confuse me with facts.

The object of knowledge is what exists and its function is to know reality.

Democracy passes into despotism.

Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.

God is not the author of all things, but of good only.

Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

One man cannot practice many arts with success.

The most beautiful motion is that which accomplishes the greatest results with the least amount of effort.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

Let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible ... For this is the way of happiness.

When you admonish a wrongdoer, do so gently, that it may not lead to hostility.

Man was not made for himself alone.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

Adultery is the injury of nature.

As the government is, such will be the man.

Madness is the divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.

He whom love touches not walks in darkness.

My plainness of speech makes people hate me, but what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.

There is truth in wine and children.

Courage is knowing what to fear.

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

Each citizen should play his part in the community according to his individual gifts.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.

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

I would fain grow old learning many things.

The three wishes of every man: to be healthy, to be rich by honest means, and to be beautiful.

The proud man is forsaken of God.

Let brother help brother.

Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? Or anything better than cohesion and unity?

A fit of laughter, which has been indulged to excess, almost always produces a violent reaction.

When there is crime in society, there is no justice.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

The wolf cares not, how many the sheep be.

Not only is the old man twice a child, but also the man who is drunk.

To do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it.

I do not live to play, but I play that I may live, and return with greater zest to the labors of life.

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

You can remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones.

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.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim is not virtuous.

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know.

Kindness which is bestowed on the good is never lost.

Wisdom is a blaze kindles by a leaping spark.

I urge you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.

Art has no end but its own perfection.

Let praise be given to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.

We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we’re looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven’t found it.

There’s a victory and defeat — the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats — which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

To be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

The judge should not be young, he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others.

Through obedience learn to command.

Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling and useless things than they deserve.

He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.

Do not expect justice where might is right.

No attempt should be made to cure the body without the soul.

It is not noble to return evil for evil; never ought we to do injury to our neighbors.

Men of sound sense have Law for their god, but men without sense Pleasure.

Most people affirm pleasure to be the good, but the wise say it is knowledge.

It is vain for the sober man to knock at poesy’s door.

God is truth and light his shadow.

This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence .... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their natures are all related.

It is through geometry that one purifies the eye of the soul.

What a handsome face he had: but if he were naked you would forget he had a face, he is so beautiful in every way.

The most important stage of any enterprise is the beginning.

If a man be endowed with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.

The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

To be curious about that which is not one’s concern while still in ignorance of oneself is ridiculous.

And is there anything more connected with wisdom than truth?

The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies — they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.

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

Abstinence is the surety of temperance.

Mathematics is the language in which the gods talk to people.

The god, O men, seems to me to be really wise; and by his oracle to mean this: that the wisdom of this world is foolishness and of none effect.

Let children bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

It would be better for me ... that multitudes of men should disagree rather than I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance.

Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of philosophers.

Who are the true philosophers? Those whose passion is to love the truth.

Discordance is evil. Harmony is virtue.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

Worthy of honor is he who does no injustice, and more than twofold honor, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any.

May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me.

Arrogance is ever accompanied by folly.

There is in every one of us, even those who seem most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest ... and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always trying to stir up some war.

Give me a different set of mothers and I will give you a different world.

Virtue is a kind of health, beauty and good habit of the soul.

If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful.

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

When the music changes, the walls of the city shake.

Don’t ask a poet to explain himself. He cannot.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.

Before all it’s necessary to look after the Soul if you want the head and the rest of the body to function correctly.

It is right to give every man his due.

Prefer diligence above idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.

Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.

If it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Wine fills the heart with courage.

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.

The truth is we isolate a particular kind of love and appropriate it for the name of love, which really belongs to a wider whole.

Of all the Gods, Love is the best friend of humankind, the helper and healer of all ills that stand in the way of human happiness.

There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who, when danger is pressing in, will not acknowledge the divine power.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

Any city, however poor, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.

I should not like to say ... that any kind of knowledge is not to be learned; for all knowledge appears to be a good.

A good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and his affairs are not neglected by the gods.

As there are misanthropists or haters of men, so also there are misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.

Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.

Lust is inseparably accompanied with the troubling of all order, with impudence, unseemliness, sloth, and dissoluteness.

And the quality of good judgement is clearly a form of knowledge and skill, as it is because of knowledge and not because of ignorance that we judge well.

Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.

The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.

No town can live peacefully whatever its laws when its citizens do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable, inasmuch as he has the fountain of reason in him not yet regulated.

All well bred men should have mastered the art of singing and dancing.

Education is the constraining and directing of our youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.

Every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing ... There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any writing of mine dealing with this subject.

The flute is not an instrument that has a good moral effect — it is too exciting.

The passionate are like men standing on their heads, they see all things the wrong way.

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

When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself.

Boys should abstain from use of wine until their eighteenth year, for it is wrong to add fire to fire.

A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.

Everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the principle of the stronger.

Love: a grave mental disease.

Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.

Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for its sake.

It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they be hardened by too much rebuke.

A work well begun is half ended.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all.

He that lendeth to another in time of prosperity, shall never want help himself in time of adversity.

What then is the right way to live? Life should be lived as play.

And we have made of ourselves living cesspools, and driven doctors to invent names for our diseases.

There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.

Truth is its own reward.

This city is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not.

It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.

Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

A good education consists in knowing how to sing and dance well.

Desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none, or very slight ones.

When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.

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

A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!