Plato Idealism Quotes

The Gospel worldview equips the artist with a unique combination of optimism and realism about life. ~ Timothy Keller

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

The greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind, yet the mind and the body are one and should not be treated separately! ~ Plato

He who advises a sick man, whose manner of life is prejudicial to health, is clearly bound first of all to change his patient's manner of life. ~ Plato

If a young person has any idealism at all, it's strongest about the time he finishes college. ~ Sargent Shriver

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding. ~ Plato

You were so beautiful when you were young. So much idealism it was inspiring. ~ Miguel Syjuco

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

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. ~ Plato

Every theory of love, from Plato down, teaches that each individual loves in the other sex what he lacks in himself. ~ G. Stanley Hall

All human beings are vines. But especially the idealist. He is a vine, and he needs to clutch and climb. And he despises the man who is a mere potato, or turnip, or lump of wood. ~ D.H. Lawrence

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

According to Plato, we don't learn anything. Our soul has lived so many lives that we know everything. Teachers and education can only remind us of what we already know. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Only the dead have seen the end of war. ~ Plato

To a good man nothing that happens is evil. ~ Plato

I distrust idealism. I've seen enough of it in practice to know it's rarely about the other man. You might even call it the ultimate expression of arrogance, but whatever you call it, it's not worth dying for ~ Nina Allan

In PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein set out to showcase, in sometimes startling ways, the continuing relevance of a classic philosopher. But what's remarkable is that she actually brings off this tour de force with both madcap brilliance and commanding authority. ~ Michael Dirda

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable. ~ Plato

The first book I could call mine, my first book, was a picture book, 'The Magic Monkey' - it was adapted from an old Chinese legend by a thirteen-year-old prodigy named Plato Chan with the help of his sister. ~ Nick Flynn

In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour. ~ George Santayana

And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors. ~ Plato

The whole idealism of humanity ... is on the point of tipping into nihilism - into the belief in absolute valuelessness, that is, meaninglessness... The annihilation of ideals, the new wasteland, the new arts of enduring it, we amphibians. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You're the medium Weed and I use to communicate, that's all, this set of holes, pleasantly framed, this little femme scampering back and forth with scented messages tucked in her little secret places.
She was too young then to understand what he thought he was offering her, a secret about power in the world. That's what he thought it was. Brock was young then too. She only took it as some parable about his feelings for her, one she didn't exactly understand but covered for with the wide invincible gaze practiced by many sixties children, meaning nearly anything at all, useful in a lot of situations, including ignorance. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Necessity is literally the mother of invention. ~ Plato

I have it in my mind that classification is a necessary condition of the working of the mental implement but that it is a departure from the objective truth of things, that classification is very serviceable for the practical purposes of life but a very doubtful preliminary to those fine penetrations the philosophical purpose, in its more arrogant moods, demands. All the peculiarities of my way of thinking derive from that.

I submit to you that syllogism is based on classification, that all hard logical reasoning tends to imply and is apt to imply a confidence in the objective reality of classification. Consequently in denying that I deny the absolute validity of logic. Classification and number, which in truth ignore the fine differences of objective realities, have in the past of human thought been imposed upon things. [...] The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.

It was about this difficulty that the mind of Plato played a little inconclusively all his life. For the most part he tended to regard the idea as the something behind reality, whereas it seems to me that the idea is the more proximate and less perfect thing, the thing by which the mind, by ignoring individual differences, attempts to comprehend an otherwise unmanageable number of unique realities. ~ H.G. Wells

We women are weak," replied Bimala. "So I suppose we must join in the conspiracy of the weak."
"Women weak!" I exclaimed with a laugh. "Men belaud you as delicate and fragile, so as to delude you into thinking yourselves weak. But it is you women who are strong. Men make a great outward show of their so-called freedom, but those who know their inner minds are aware of their bondage. They have
manufactured scriptures with their own hands to bind themselves; with their very idealism they have made golden fetters of women to wind round their body and mind. If men had not that extraordinary faculty of entangling themselves in meshes of their own contriving, nothing could have kept them bound. But as for
you women, you have desired to conceive reality with body and soul. You have given birth to reality. You have suckled reality at your breasts. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate. ~ Plato

Those who suppose they are producing a materialist theory of knowledge when they make knowledge a passive recording and abandon the "active aspect" of knowledge to idealism, as Marx complains in the theses on Feuerbach, forget that all knowledge, and in particular all knowledge of the social world, is an act of construction implementing schemes of thought and expression, and that between conditions of existence and practices or representations there intervenes the structuring activity of the agents, who, far from reacting mechanically to mechanical stimulations, respond to the invitations or threats of a world whose meaning they have helped to produce. ~ Pierre Bourdieu

Ever since Plato most philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce 'proofs' of immortality and the existence of God. They have found fault with the proofs of their predecessors - Saint Thomas rejected Saint Anselm's proofs, and Kant rejected Descartes' - but they have supplied new ones of their own. In order to make their proofs seem valid, they have had to falsify logic, to make mathematics mystical, and to pretend that deepseated prejudices were heaven-sent intuitions. ~ Bertrand Russell

Stranger: 'Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?
Theatetus: Quite true.
Stranger: But the stream of thought which flows through the lips and is audible is called speech?
Theatetus: True.
Stranger: And we know that there exists in speech ...
Theatetus: What exists?
Stranger: Affirmation
Theatetus: Yes, we know it. ~ Plato

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

And therefore suppose that Plato dreamed of somewhat like it when he called the madness of lovers the most happy condition of all others. For he that's violently in love lives not in his own body but in the thing he loves; and by how much the farther he runs from himself into another, by so much the greater is his pleasure ~ Erasmus

We must now examine whether just people also live better and are happier than unjust ones. I think it's clear already that this is so, but we must look into it further, since the argument concerns no ordinary topic, but the way we ought to live. ~ Plato

Love is a grave mental disease." "Shakespeare?" Kyle shook his head. "Plato. ~ Tracy Brogan

Socrates chose to drink hemlock rather than to follow morality in contravention of Athen's laws. As depicted in Plato's Crito dialogue, Socrates had been convicted by a jury of 500 Athenians of impiety and of corrupting the young. He was sentenced to die by drinking hemlock. His friend Crito tried to convince him to escape rather than to accept the immoral judgement of the Athenian state (Socrates had not corrupted the young but educated them.) Socrates responded by pointing out that he had lived in Athens as an Athenian citizen, accepting all of the benefits of its government and laws. On this basis, he had a type of "Social Contract" obligation to continue to accept the Athen's laws and legal judgement. He saw this as a moral obligation, even if the judgment at hand was itself immoral. Thus, for Socrates, and Plato, the law has its own morality, even when its results are immoral. ~ Joel P. Trachtman

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

The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all. ~ Penn Jillette

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

Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the Sacred Volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man. Section ~ John Calvin

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? ~ Plato

From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life than that men count most happy, the life of victors at Olympia. ~ Plato

My hero Socrates trained Plato on a rock. How much did that cost? So the greatest minds in history became the greatest minds in history without spending a lot of money. ~ Dave Brat

Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach

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. ~ Plato

The '60s redefined narcissism as idealism. ~ Dennis Prager

No human thing is of serious importance. ~ Plato

Sometimes idealism and all that make believe makes the world a better place. ~ Sung Kang