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Quotes by Plato


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

Caring about the happiness of others we find our own.
– Plato

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

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
– Plato

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
– 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
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
All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.
– 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
Courage is a kind of salvation.
– Plato
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
– Plato
Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.
– Plato
Democracy passes into despotism.
– Plato
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
– 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
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
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
– Plato
He was a wise man who invented beer.
– Plato
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
– Plato
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?
– 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
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
– Plato
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?
– Plato
It is right to give every man his due.
– 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
Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
– Plato
Knowledge is true opinion.
– Plato
Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
– Plato
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
– Plato
Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind.
– Plato
Love is a serious mental disease.
– Plato
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
– Plato
Man - a being in search of meaning.
– Plato
Moderation, which consists in an indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance.
– 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
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
– Plato
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
– Plato
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
– Plato
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
– Plato
Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold and have escaped, not from one master, but from many.
– Plato
Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
– Plato
Philosophy is the highest music.
– Plato
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
– Plato
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
– Plato
Science is nothing but perception.
– Plato
States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.
– Plato
That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman.
– Plato
The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
– Plato
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
– Plato
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
– Plato
The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
– Plato
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
– 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
The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
– Plato
The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
– Plato
The wisest have the most authority.
– Plato
Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded.
– Plato
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.
– Plato
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.
– Plato
There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.
– 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
These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.
– Plato
They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.
– Plato
Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself.
– Plato
This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
– Plato
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
– Plato
To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.
– Plato
We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
– 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
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
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
– 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
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
– 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
From a short-sided view, the whole moving contents of the heavens seemed to them a parcel of stones, earth and other soul-less bodies, though they furnish the sources of the world order.
– Plato
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
– Plato
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
– Plato
Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.
– Plato
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.
– Plato
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.
– Plato
Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
– Plato
No human thing is of serious importance.
– Plato
There is no such thing as a lover's oath.
– Plato
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
– Plato
You cannot conceive the many without the one.
– Plato
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
– Plato
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.
– Plato
Friends have all things in common.
– Plato
The greatest penalty of evildoing - namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.
– Plato
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.
– Plato
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
– Plato
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
– Plato
Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
– Plato
Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.
– Plato
Necessity, who is the mother of invention.
– Plato
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.
– Plato
The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.
– Plato
There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.
– Plato
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.
– Plato