Quotes by 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."

Plato on philosophers and philosophy   

"The beginning is the most important part of the work."

Plato on planning   

"Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil."

Plato on pleasure   

"Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history."

Plato on poetry and poets   

"It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other."

Plato on astronomy   

"There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who when danger is pressing in will not acknowledge the divine power."

Plato on atheism   

"The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself."

Plato on politics   

"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 on politics   

"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."

Plato on professions and professionals   

"When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."

Plato on psychology
6 fans of this quote   

"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 on reason   

"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."

Plato on evolution
3 fans of this quote   

"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men."

Plato on rhetoric   

"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 on riches   

"No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory."

Plato on school   

"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."

Plato on science   

"I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning."

Plato on science   

"Science is nothing but perception."

Plato on science
8 fans of this quote   

"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."

Plato on sex   

"Let nobody speak mischief of anybody."

Plato on slander   

"We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue."

Plato on story and story-telling   

"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."

Plato on students   

"Too much attention to health is a hindrance to learning, to invention, and to studies of any kind, for we are always feeling suspicious shootings and swimmings in our heads, and we are prone to blame studies from them."

Plato on studying   

"Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depends on simplicity."

Plato on beauty   

"When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them."

Plato on character
4 fans of this quote   

"No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern."

Plato on teacher   

"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 on teacher   

"Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself."

Plato on thoughts and thinking
9 fans of this quote   

"Truth is its own reward."

Plato on truth
6 fans of this quote   

"They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth."

Plato on truth
3 fans of this quote   

"The people always have some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector."

Plato on tyranny   

"Self conquest is the greatest of victories."

Plato on victory   

"The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so."

Plato on virtue
3 fans of this quote   

"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter."

Plato on wealth   

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

Plato on wisdom
16 fans of this quote   

"The wisest have the most authority."

Plato on wisdom   

"Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences."

Plato on wisdom
3 fans of this quote   

"Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety."

Plato on worry
3 fans of this quote   

"A well begun is half ended."

Plato on action   

"Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another."

Plato on life