Plato – 97 Quotes – The Quote List

Share the love

97 Quotes by Plato

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.

– Plato

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

– Plato

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

– Plato

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

– Plato

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

– Plato

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.

– Plato

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.

– Plato

Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns.

– Plato

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

– Plato

Courage is a kind of salvation.

– Plato

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

– Plato

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

– Plato

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

– Plato

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

– Plato

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

– Plato

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

– Plato

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

– Plato

Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.

– Plato

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

– Plato

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

– Plato

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

– Plato

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.

– Plato

The good is the beautiful.

– Plato

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

– Plato

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.

– Plato

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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.

– Plato

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

– Plato

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

– Plato

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

– Plato

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

– Plato

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

– Plato

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

– Plato

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

– Plato

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

– Plato

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

– Plato

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

– Plato

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

– Plato

Knowledge is true opinion.

– Plato

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

– Plato

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

– Plato

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

– Plato

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

– Plato

I would fain grow old learning many things.

– Plato

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

– Plato

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

– Plato

Life must be lived as play.

– Plato

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

– Plato

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.

– Plato

Love is a serious mental disease.

– Plato

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

They certainly give very strange names to diseases.

– Plato

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

– Plato

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

– Plato

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

– Plato

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

– Plato

Wise men speak because they have something to say Fools because they have to say something.

– Plato

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.

– Plato

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

– Plato

Philosophy is the highest music.

– Plato

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

– Plato

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings 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.

– Plato

Science is nothing but perception.

– Plato

One man cannot practice many arts with success.

– Plato

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

– Plato

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

– Plato

Cunning… is but the low mimic of wisdom.

– Plato

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident they came by work.

– Plato