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Plato Quotes

427 BC–347 BC Greece

Plato (Πλάτων Plátōn; c. 427 BC – c. 347 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, founder of the Platonist school of thought and the Academy (Akademia), the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

Greece
Philosophers
Physicists
Poets

Also known as: Phaedrus (dialogue), Platonic, Platonists

Random Plato quote

105 quotes

After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers.

But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life—thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine?

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul; on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.

It must be supposed, not that the god specially wished this problem solved, but that he would have the Greeks desist from war and wickedness and cultivate the Muses, so that, their passions being assuaged by philosophy and mathematics, they might live in innocent and mutually helpful intercourse with one another.

If what I assume is true, it is still excellent to be convinced of it, but if there is nothing after death, I will at least during the time before my death be less burdensome to my companions because of complaints, and furthermore this folly of mine will not last long—for that would indeed be an evil—but in a short time will vanish.

The very rich are not good.

I do see one large and grievous kind of ignorance, separate from the rest, and as weighty as all the other parts put together. Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us.

I shouldn't like to take my oath on the whole story, but one thing I am ready to fight for as long I can, in word and in act—that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don't know than if we believe there is no point in looking because what we don't know we can never discover.

The attempt to separate everything from everything else is not only not in good taste but also shows that a man is utterly uncultivated and unphilosophical. The complete separation of each thing from all is the utterly final obliteration of all discourse. For our power of discourse is derived from the interweaving of the classes or ideas with one another.

My love, Alcibiades, which I hardly like to confess, would long ago have passed away, as I flatter myself, if I saw you loving your good things, or thinking that you ought to pass life in the enjoyment of them.

Socrates: But suppose the words used are ‘just’ and ‘good’. Don’t we then go each his own way, and find ourselves in disagreement with ourselves as well as with each other?
Phaedrus: Undoubtedly.

Gold and silver, we shall tell them, they will not need, having the divine counterparts of those metals always in their souls as a god-given possession, whose purity it is not lawful to sully by the acquisition of that mortal dross, current among mankind, which has been the occasion of so many unholy deeds.

The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Attributed

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.

Misattributed

Successful people never worry about what others are doing.

Disputed

The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics.

Disputed

Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year.

Misattributed to Plato in Confidence : How to Succeed at Being Yourself (1987)

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Misattributed

Empathy is the highest form of knowledge. (Sometimes this appears as ‘Empathy is the highest form of knowledge, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world’.)

Misattributed

Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it becomes an error of the understanding.

Misattributed

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Plato (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.