Plato Afterlife Quotes

If we do survive death, then the next world is veiled from us for a purpose. Regardless of our endless conjecture, each of us will make this discovery individually, whether we wish to or not. However, we do know the conditions of the world around us and its inhabitants; we know these in detail. We can only conclude, then, that we are meant to focus on this world in which we live, and not groundless speculation about the next. History shows that an obsession with the afterlife smothers our concern for the living. ~ J.L. Bryan

The first and last schoolmaster of life is living and committing oneself unreservedly and dangerously to living; to men who know this an Aristotle and a Plato have much to say; but those who have imposed cautions on themselves and petrified themselves in a system of ideas, them the masters themselves will lead into error ~ Thornton Wilder

And a democracy, I suppose, comes into being when the poor, winning the victory, put to death some of the other party, drive out others, and grant the rest of the citizens an equal share in both citizenship and offices. ~ Plato

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

The good is twice described in
the Philebus as perfect, self-
sufficient and seeked by all
conscious beings. And the good
does not have a contrary: it is not
the one end of a scale whose evil
would be the other end; it is a
measure on any scale.
Taken from Bernard Suzanne
Plato and his dialogues
Pursuing Goodness or the Good.
Updated Nov 21, 1998 ~ Plato

I reached out blindly, clasped a warm hand, faded from life and into peace.
Well, that was what was supposed to happen ... Except an annoying, distracting tug kept pulling and yanking ...
When I woke, I thought I had overcome the pull and stayed in the afterlife. Whiteness billowed over me in soft waves. My body was cushioned and cocooned in warmth. I stretched my legs and then tried to raise my arms, but my left arm wouldn't budge. Rolling over, I encountered a number of very unpleasant realities.
I was alive. I was in a room. I was naked except for a blood-stained bandage wrapped tight around my stomach. Kerrick lay beside me. And his hand trapped mine.
Kill. Me. Now. ~ Maria V. Snyder

The mixture of the oral and the written traditions in the writings of Plato enabled him to dominate the history of the West. ~ Harold Innis

The knowledge of which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal. ~ Plato

The like is not the friend of the like in as far as he is like; still the good may be the friend of the good in as far as he is good. ~ Plato

In the "Republic," Plato vigorously attacked the oral, poetized form as a vehicle for communicating knowledge. He pleaded for a more precise method of communication and classification ("The Ideas"), one which would favor the investigation of facts, principles of reality, human nature, and conduct. What the Greeks meant by "poetry" was radically different from what we mean by poetry. Their "poetic" expression was a product of a collective psyche and mind. The mimetic form, a technique that exploited rhythm, meter and music, achieved the desired psychological response in the listener. Listeners could memorize with greater ease what was sung than what was said. Plato attacked this method because it discouraged disputation and argument. It was in his opinion the chief obstacle to abstract, speculative reasoning - he called it "a poison, and an enemy of the people. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not. ~ Protagoras ~ Plato

How could you die and not be old enough to hear about premarital sex? How could you die and still not be allowed to fall in love or be honest? Surely not everything had to wait for university and a good job. Passion and truth had to trump even those things. ~ Zen Cho

We're all inadequate," David answered. "Just think: the light from the outside world is mapped onto the retina, then further mapped onto the visual cortex, then broken apart and analyzed in other areas of the brain. At every step there's a loss of information. In the end, what we are aware of is not the outside world per se, but the image of the world projected onto our brains. Plato was anatomically right; we do see shadows on a wall. ~ Carolyn Ives Gilman

First, I think that if our rulers and their auxiliaries are to be worthy of the name which they bear, there must be willingness to obey in the one and the power of command in the other; the guardians must themselves obey the laws, and they must also imitate the spirit of them in any details which are entrusted to their care. That is right, he said. You, ~ Plato

In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful -in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason -and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes. ~ Plato

I do not fear death. I fear dying before reaching my full potential. I dread setting my feet in the afterlife before I radiate all of the richness I have within, before exploring all of the opportunities life can offer me. ~ Ahmed Ghrib

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. ~ Plato

God forever geometrizes. ~ Plato

Die happily and look forward to taking up a new and better form. Like the sun, only when you set in the west can you rise in the east. ~ Rumi

As it is, lovers of inquiry must follow their beloved wherever it may lead. ~ Plato

As C. S. Lewis says in The Great Divorce, if in this life you never say to God, "Thy will be done," then eventually God will say to you for the afterlife, "All right, then thy will be done." If you want freedom from God, you will quite justly get what you hope for. ~ Timothy J. Keller

For the one (what is dear to the gods) is of the sort to be loved
because it is loved; the other (the holy), because it is of the sort to be loved,
therefore is loved. ~ Plato

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. ~ Plato

Healing cannot occur by refusing to listen to the truth, unsettling as it may be. ~ Slade Combs

The view that the truth is one and undivided, and the same for all men everywhere at all times, whether one finds it in the pronouncements of sacred books, traditional wisdom, the authority of churches, democratic majorities, observation and experiment conducted by qualified experts, or the convictions of simple folks uncorrupted by civilisation
this view, in one form or another, is central to western thought, which stems from Plato and his disciples. ~ Isaiah Berlin

I'm done playing Brokeback Riverdale with you. ~ Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

You did not seem to me over-fond of money. And this is the way in general with those who have not made it themselves, while those who have are twice as fond of it as anyone else. For just as poets are fond of their own poems, and fathers of their own children, so money-makers become devoted to money, not only because, like other people, they find it useful, but because it's their own creation. ~ Plato

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent. ~ Plato

To the philosopher, infinity, knowledge, movement, empirical laws, etc., are things just as familiar {as family relations}. And as her dead brother and uncle are present to the peasant woman, thus Plato, Spinoza, etc. are present to the philosopher. The one has as much reality as the other, but the latter are immortal. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Let him take heart who does advance, even in the smallest degree. ~ Plato

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."
― Plato, Plato's Republic ~ Plato

We die, we turn, we are reborn as we deserve to be reborn, based on our doings in this world." Will looked down at his bitten nails. "I will probably be reborn as a slug that someone salts. ~ Cassandra Clare

Death is the only serious preoccupation in life. ~ Alexandre Dumas

For he, Adeimantus, whose mind is fixed upon true being, has surely no time to look down upon the affairs of earth, or to be filled with malice and envy, contending against men ~ Plato

I see life as a shared gift, received from others and passed on to others, living and dying as one process, in which lies both our suffering and our reward. Without mortality to purchase it, how can we have the consciousness of eternity? I think the price is worth paying. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

And if the truth of all things that are is always in our soul, then the soul must be immortal, so you should take courage and whatever you do not happen to know, that is to remember, at present, you must endeavour to discover and recollect...I cannot swear to everything I have said in this argument – but one thing I am ready to fight for in word and deed, that we shall be better, braver and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we do not know, than if we think we cannot discover it and have no duty to seek it. ~ Plato

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth' ... Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment. ~ Bertrand Russell

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

Writing is the geometry of the soul. ~ Plato