Plato Quotes

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 a serious mental disease.

~ Plato

...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment...

~ Plato

Wise men speak because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something.

~ 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

One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

~ 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

Philosophy is the highest music.

~ Plato

In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society.

~ Plato

How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

~ 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

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

~ Plato

For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.

~ 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

let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.

~ 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 [arete] (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

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

~ 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

Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.

~ 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

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

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

You should not honor men more than truth.

~ 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

He was a wise man who invented God.

~ 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

Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.

~ 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

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

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

~ 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

Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.

~ 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

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

~ Plato

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

~ 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

Knowledge is the food of the soul.

~ Plato

Those who don't know must learn from those who do.

~ Plato

Then we shan’t regard anyone as a lover of knowledge or wisdom who is fussy about what he studies…

~ 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