Plato Quotes - Page 3

The measure of a man is what he does with power.
Plato
So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funnelled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on his energy and initiative of mind, if he has any, is to soften it as iron is softened in a furnace, and made workable instead of hard and unworkable: but if he persists and does not break the enchantment, the next stage is that it melts and runs, till the spirit has quite run out of him and his mental sinews (if I may so put it) are cut, and he has become what Homer calls "a feeble fighter".
Plato
Physical excellence does not of itself produce a good mind and character: on the other hand, excellence of mind and character will make the best of the physique it is given.
Plato
Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.
Plato
....harmony that would fittingly imitate the utterances and accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed […] confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes
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
No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself
Plato
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
Plato
if someone got to see the Beautiful itself, absolute, pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any other great nonsense of mortality, but if he could see the divine Beauty itself in its one form? Do you think it would be a poor life for a human being to look there and to behold it by that which he ought, and to be with it? Or haven't you remembered that in that life alone, when he looks at Beauty in the only way what Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth no to images of virtue but to true virtue. The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.
Plato
All good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates in the soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes.
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 brillance.
Plato
Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?
Plato
All began to change in the reverse direction and grow more tender. The white hair of the elderly began to grow black; the cheeks of the bearded to grow smooth, and one and all to return to the season of bloom that they had left behind them. Young men’s bodies grew smoother and smaller day by day and night by night till they reverted alike in mind and body to the likes of a newborn infant, and then dwindled right away and were clean lost to sight.
Plato
All is flux, nothing stays still
Plato
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Plato
...[T]he right way is to give one's attention first to the highest good of the young, just as you expect a good gardener to give his attention first to the young plants, and after that to the others. - Socrates
Plato
They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)
Plato
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Plato
The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
Plato
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato
good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws
Plato
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
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
You take the words in the sense which is most damaging to the argument.
Plato
You take the words in the sense which is most damaging to the argument.
Plato
For, let me tell you that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me are the pleasure and charm of conversation.
Plato
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
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
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent.
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
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life
Plato
The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.
Plato
That's what education should be," I said, "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
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
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance
Plato
And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.
Plato
Knowledge unqualified is knowledge simply of something learned.
Plato
Then we shan’t regard anyone as a lover of knowledge or wisdom who is fussy about what he studies…
Plato
Those who don't know must learn from those who do.
Plato
Knowledge is the food of the soul.
Plato
Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.
Plato
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
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
A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.
Plato
Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.
Plato
Writing is the geometry of the soul.
Plato
There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric....But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.
Plato
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
Plato
For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
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
Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.
Plato
I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.
Plato
He was a wise man who invented God.
Plato
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
You should not honor men more than truth.
Plato
For to fear death, men, is in fact nothing other than to seem to be wise, but not to be so. For it is to seem to know what one does not know: no one knows whether death does not even happen to be the greatest of all goods for the human being; but people fear it as though they knew well that it is the greatest of evils.
Plato
Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].
Plato
....I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best.(tr Jowett)
Plato
Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.
Plato
O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.
Plato