129 Plato Quotes (to Freshen Up Your Philosophical Outlook on Life)
Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.E.) was a philosopher, as well as mathematician, in Classical Greece. He was a student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens. He still is, without a doubt, one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy and one of the most dazzling writers in the Western literary tradition. Plato displays in his works his absorption in the intellectual movements and political events of his time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important respects.
Plato was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as it is often conceived—a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called his invention.
Table of Contents
- Short Quotes by Plato
- Plato’s Inspirational quotes
- Insightful quotes by Plato
- Cynical quotes by Plato
- Plato’s poetic quotes
- Romantic quotes by Plato
Short Quotes by Plato
- Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil. Plato
- Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy. Plato
- Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. Plato
- The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. Plato
- Knowledge is the food of the soul. Plato
- The first and best victory is to conquer self. Plato
- A dog has the soul of a philosopher. Plato
- Pleasure is the bait of sin. Plato
- Time is the moving image of reality. Plato
- I’m trying to think, don’t confuse me with facts. Plato
- There is truth in wine and children. Plato
- Writing is the geometry of the soul. Plato
- Death is not the worst that can happen to men. Plato
- He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act. Plato
- Those who tell the stories rule society. Plato
- Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself. Plato
- You should not honor men more than truth. Plato
- Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. Plato
- The beginning is the most important part of the work. Plato
- I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Plato
Plato’s Inspirational quotes
- For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories. Plato
- Ideas are the source of all things. Plato
- To the degree that I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears. Plato
- Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. Plato
- Nothing beautiful without struggle. 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 direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. Plato
- Courage is knowing what not to fear. Plato
- Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul. Plato
- Those who don’t know must learn from those who do. Plato
- In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection. Plato
- If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things. Plato
- When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. Plato
- Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being. 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
- No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education. Plato
- If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it. Plato
- Education is teaching our children to desire the right things. Plato
- The greatest wealth is to live content with little. Plato
- Character is simply habit long continued. Plato
- The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. Plato
- A life without investigation is not worth living. Plato
- Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity. Plato
- He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse. Plato
- When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. Plato
- The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and escapes the worst disease, but, if a man’s education be neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for nothing to the world below. Plato
- Let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly. Plato
- The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings. Plato
- No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes. Plato
- Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others. Plato
- There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. Plato
- The virtuous man combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself. Plato
- Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous. Plato
- Let parents then bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit of reverence. Plato
- That’s what education should be, the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn’t be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn’t facing the right way. Plato
Insightful quotes by Plato
- Never discourage anyone… who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. 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
- Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. Plato
- All learning has an emotional base. Plato
- Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. Plato
- There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain. 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
- Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses. Plato
- Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool. Plato
- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. Plato
- To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to man; but people dread it as though they were certain it is the greatest evil. Plato
- Everything that deceives may be said to enchant. 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
- The soul of man is immortal and imperishable. Plato
- We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we’re looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven’t found it. Plato
- This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. Plato
- False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Plato
- A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books. Plato
- Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity – I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly. Plato
- Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. Plato
- Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another. Plato
- The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things. Plato
- 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
- The measure of a man is what he does with power. Plato
- I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning. Plato
- For as there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. 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
- When someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won’t laugh mindlessly, but he’ll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brilliance. Plato
Cynical quotes by Plato
- Only the dead have seen the end of war. Plato
- No human thing is of serious importance. Plato
- Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty Plato
- There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless. Plato
- Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand. Plato
- Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. Plato
- It’s better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just. Plato
- Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value. Plato
- Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. Plato
- Love is a serious mental disease. Plato
- Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another. Plato
- Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable. Plato
- There is no such thing as a lover’s oath. Plato
- No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself. Plato
- No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth. Plato
- I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. Plato
- All I really know is the extent of my own ignorance. Plato
- In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one. Plato
- We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection. Plato
Plato’s poetic quotes
- Necessity is the mother of invention. Plato
- At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. Plato
- It is our duty to select the best and most dependable theory that human intelligence can supply, and use it as a raft to ride the seas of life. Plato
- Man is a being in search of meaning. Plato
- What if the man could see Beauty Itself, pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality, and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine,…the man becoming in that communion, the friend of God, himself immortal;…would that be a life to disregard? Plato
- An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers. Plato
- 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 recognise that the same thing happens to the soul. Plato
- The man deserved his fate, deny it who can; yes, but the fate did not deserve the man. Plato
- Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. 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
- A house that has a library in it has a soul. Plato
- Only a philosopher’s mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. Plato
- What a strange thing that which men call pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with what is thought to be its opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is almost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head. Plato
- Books are immortal sons defying their sires. Plato
- 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. Plato
- Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away… A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him. 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
- The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful. Plato
- Philosophy is the highest music. Plato
Romantic quotes by Plato
- Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole. Plato
- Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. Plato
- Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Plato
- When he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen – only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he’s in touch with no images), but to true virtue (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he. Plato
- Love is of something, and that which love desires is not that which love is or has; for no man desires that which he is or has. And love is of the beautiful, and therefore has not the beautiful. And the beautiful is the good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love also wants and desires the good. Plato
- According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty. Plato
- Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world. Plato
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