Plato quotes:

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

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

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

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

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

  • Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

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

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

  • Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

  • 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.

  • Philosophy is the highest music.

  • For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

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

  • 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.

  • Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

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

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

  • Knowledge is true opinion.

  • 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.

  • Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

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

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

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Love is a serious mental disease.

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

  • Philosophy begins in wonder.

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

  • No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

  • Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.

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

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

  • 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?

  • Courage is knowing what not to fear.

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

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

  • One man cannot practice many arts with success.

  • Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

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

  • 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.

  • The beginning is the most important part of the work.

  • The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

  • Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.

  • This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

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

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

  • Only the dead have seen the end of war.

  • They certainly give very strange names to diseases.

  • They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.

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

  • At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

  • Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.

  • When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

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

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

  • 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.

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

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

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

  • Si vis pacem, para bellum

  • Then we got into a labyrinth, and, when we thought we were at the end,came out again at the beginning, having still to see as much as ever.

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

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

  • Writing is the geometry of the soul."

  • Let no one destitute of Geometry enter my doors."

  • 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."

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

  • Abstinence is the surety of temperance.

  • 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.

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

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

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

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

  • A dog has the soul of a philosopher.

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

  • I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

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

  • The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage.

  • Better a good enemy than a bad friend.

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

  • Pleasure is the bait of sin

  • They would be subject to no one, neither to lawful ruler nor to the reign of law, but would be altogether and absolutely free. That is the way they got their tyrants, for either servitude or freedom, when it goes to extremes, is an utter bane, while either in due measure is altogether a boon.

  • Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love - all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce.

  • When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has the eye to contemplate the vision.

  • When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading: Henny Youngman. He was a wise man who invented beer

  • He was a wise man who invented beer.

  • Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both in heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be from the first a partaker of truth, for then he can be trusted.

  • Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

  • Arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.

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

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

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

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

  • What is better adapted than the festive use of wine in the first place to test and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it? What is there cheaper or more innocent?

  • 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.

  • This alone is to be feared: the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of spirit.

  • ... the community suffers nothing very terrible if its cobblers are bad and become degenerate and pretentious; but if the Guardians of its laws and constitution, who alone have the opportunity to bring it good government and prosperity, become a mere sham, then clearly it is completely ruined.

  • Avoid compulsion and let early education be a matter of amusement. Young children learn by games; compulsory education cannot remain in the soul.

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

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

  • 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.

  • Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.

  • Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul

  • A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.

  • The power to learn is present in everyone's soul, and the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body.

  • Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

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