Plato S Quotes

Do not expect Plato's ideal republic; be satisfied with even the smallest step forward, and consider this no small achievement. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long. ~ John Milton

The old axiom that 'all power corrupts' has doubtful validity, because it derives from our neglect of Plato 's advice to find men carefully and train them by methods which make them fit for heroes. ~ Oswald Mosley

Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter. Said to have been inscribed above the door of Plato's Academy. ~ Plato

Epicurus had rage and envy of Plato's superior style. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms. ~ Cornel West

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Beneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, [Plato's Phaedrus] is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and provoking an expense of spirit. ~ Richard M. Weaver

I stare out at the real world projected on the windows ~ Johnny Rich

Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another. ~ Mason Cooley

Plato's cave is full of freaks. ~ Jack Johnson

But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick? ~ Plato

The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one's education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died. ~ Plato

Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid, therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is t ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is beautiful to wish to add another's light to your own. ~ Plato

It is a fact, indeed, that most of
the great teachers of mankind have been not writers
but speakers. Think of Pythagoras, Christ, Socrates,
the Buddha, and so on. And since I have spoken of
Socrates, I would like to say something about Plato. I
remember Bernard Shaw said that Plato was the dramatist
who invented Socrates ~ Jorge Luis Borges

... if a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest. ~ Plato

anarchy should have no place in the life of man or of the beasts who are subject to man. ~ Plato

Yet whenever someone comes upon his very own half then they are wondrously struck with affection and intimacy and love, and are practically unwilling to be separated from one another even for a short time. And it is they who stay together for life, and who wouldn't be able to say what they want to get for themselves from one another. ~ Plato

Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil. ~ Plato

But do not you see," answered Martin, "that he likewise dislikes everything he possesses? It was an observation of Plato, long since, that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of food. ~ Voltaire

Like Solon, Plato intended to write a long fable about legendary Atlantis; like Solon, he never did write it. Yet there existed beyond the Atlantic an unvisited land, after all, and it is more strange than any of Plato's myths that Plato's apprehension of order and justice should be a living influence among the people of that land, twenty-four centuries after the mystical philosopher's soul departed from Athens. ~ Russell Kirk

As we understand philosophy today, we often think of the works of Europeans, who often associate philosophy themselves to Greece and Rome and totally ignoring the true source of the knowledge of the Greeks such as Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, whose references to Africa and Egypt and Nubia can fill up more tomes than have already been presented to us. And ~ Uwa Afu

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

O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the Gods, know that if you become worse you shall go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven.
Plato ~ Plato

Do thine own work, and know thyself. ~ Plato

Plato argued that good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. By pretending that procedure will get rid of corruption, we have succeeded only in humiliating honest people and provided a cover of darkness and complexity for the bad people. There is a scandal here, but it's not the result of venal bureaucrats.
(1994) p. 99 ~ Philip K. Howard

181. Pharmakon means drug, but as Jacques Derrida and others have pointed out, the word in Greek famously refuses to designate whether poison or cure. It holds both in the bowl. In the dialogues Plato uses the word to refer to everything from an illness, its cause, its cure, a recipe, a charm, a substance, a spell, artificial color, and paint. ~ Maggie Nelson

For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;
this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God
when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired. ~ Plato

To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue. ~ Plato

Cooking is a form of flattery ... a mischievous, deceitful, mean and ignoble activity, which cheats us by shapes and colors, by smoothing and draping ... ~ 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

Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is. ~ Jennifer Michael Hecht

A philosopher has the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists. Wherein ~ Plato

It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death. ~ Plato

He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side. ~ Plato

Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality. ~ Plato

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

Science is nothing but perception. ~ Plato

The beginning is the most important part of the work. ~ Plato

The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it. ~ Oscar Wilde

I hope it is not necessary for me to stress the platonic nature of our relationship- not platonic in the purest sense, there was no philosophical discourse, but we certainly didn't fuck, which is usually what people mean by platonic; which I bet would really piss Plato off, that for all his thinking and chatting his name has become an adjective for describing sexless trysts. ~ Russell Brand

But it will be asked: What is the force and power of the blessings and curses of men, even if these men be such giants as Plato and Aristotle? Does truth become more true because Aristotle blesses it, or does it become error because Plato curses it? Is it given men to judge the truths, to decide the fate of the truths? On the contrary, it is the truths which judge men and decide their fate and not men who rule over the truths. Men, the great as well as the small, are born and die, appear and disappear - but the truth remains. When no one had as yet begun to "think" or to "search," the truths which later revealed themselves to men already existed. And when men will have finally disappeared from the face of the earth, or will have lost the faculty of thinking, the truths will not suffer therefrom. ~ Lev Shestov

Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort. ~ Alain Badiou

There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them. ~ Plato

When you feel grateful, you become great, and eventually attract great things. ~ Plato

In every man there is an eye of the soul, which ... is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen. ~ Plato

Cunning ... is but the low mimic of wisdom. ~ Plato