Plato quotes - page 13

For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches. (Plato)
The ludicrous state of solid geometry made me pass over this branch. View quote
Plato
If the study of all these sciences which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed. View quote
Plato
Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren's grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge. View quote
Plato
It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician for all chastisement is a kind of medicine. View quote
Plato
Moderation, which consists in an indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance. View quote
Plato
The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy. View quote
Plato
More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, And nothing else. View quote
Plato
The passionate are like men standing on their heads they see all things the wrong way. View quote
Plato
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history. View quote
Plato
I think a man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life. (Plato)
In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, ''How do you feel about love, Sophocles are you still capable of it'' to which he replied, ''Hush if you please to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master.'' I thought then, as I do now, that he spoke wisely. For unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions. View quote
Plato
Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them. View quote
Plato
The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics. View quote
Plato
Perfect wisdom has four parts, viz., wisdom, the principle of doing things aright justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private fortitude, the principle of not flying danger, but meeting it and temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately. View quote
Plato
Homosexuality, is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce. View quote
Plato
Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not. View quote
Plato
Pleasure is the bait of sin. View quote
Plato
In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful --in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason --and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes. View quote
Plato
The soul takes nothing with her to the other world but her education and culture and these, it is said, are of the greatest service or of the greatest injury to the dead man, at the very beginning of his journey hither. View quote
Plato
Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world. (Plato)
Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind. View quote
Plato
Man is a two-legged animal without feathers. View quote
Plato
Some say that the body (σῶμα) is the "tomb" (σῆμα) of the soul, their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life; and again, because by its means the soul gives any signs which it gives, it is for this reason also properly called "sign" (σῆμα). But I think it most likely that the Orphic poets gave this name, with the idea that the soul is undergoing punishment for something; they think it has the body as an enclosure to keep it safe, like a prison, and this is, as the name itself denotes, the "safe" (σῶμα) for the soul, until the penalty is paid, and not even a letter needs to be changed. View quote
Plato
It is impossible that evils should be done away with, for there must always be something opposed to the good; and they... must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth. Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible... God is in no wise and in no manner unrighteous, but utterly and perfectly righteous, and there is nothing so like him as that one of us who in turn becomes most nearly perfect in righteousness. View quote
Plato