Known to have one of the greatest influences on modern Western thought, and to have taught his ways to Aristotle in the Academy, Plato is considered one of the greatest minds and logical rationalists in world history. While his works often border mysticism, his continual pursuit of ethical answers based on logical processes still influences law, politics, education, ethics, philosophy, and psychology even today.
Not much is known about his childhood and young days but he was of some higher social class. He wrote poetry and plays and had access to the best libraries and teachers available in his day.
He knew much about the outside world, mainly through reading and intimate discussions with others. He is considered to be one of the earliest philosophers.
(428 BC – 347 BC)
– Plato Quotes –
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.
~ Plato
There is no harm in repeating a good thing.
~ Plato
Science is nothing but perception.
~ Plato
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
~ Plato
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
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
~ Plato
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.
~ Plato
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.
~ Plato
Love is a serious mental disease.
~ Plato
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
~ Plato
Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.
~ Plato
He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.
~ Plato
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
~ Plato
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
~ Plato
Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.
~ Plato
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
~ Plato
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
~ Plato
He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
~ Plato
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
~ Plato
Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.
~ Plato
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
~ Plato
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
~ Plato
We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
~ Plato
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
~ Plato
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
~ Plato
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
~ Plato
The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.
~ Plato
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
~ Plato
Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.
~ Plato
Philosophy is the highest music.
~ Plato
No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.
~ Plato
We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
~ Plato
The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
~ Plato
Man – a being in search of meaning.
~ Plato
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
The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.
~ Plato
This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
~ Plato
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.
~ Plato
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
~ Plato
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
~ Plato
He was a wise man who invented beer.
~ Plato
There’s a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.
~ Plato
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
~ Plato
Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
~ Plato
Your silence gives consent.
~ Plato
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
~ Plato
Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
~ Plato
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.
~ Plato
We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
~ Plato
Attention to health is life greatest hindrance.
~ Plato
Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.
~ Plato
They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
~ Plato
He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.
~ Plato
Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
~ Plato
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
~ Plato
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
~ Plato
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
~ Plato
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
~ Plato
The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.
~ Plato
Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.
~ Plato
Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.
~ Plato
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
~ Plato
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
~ 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
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
~ Plato
Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.
~ Plato
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
~ Plato
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
~ Plato
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
~ Plato
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
~ Plato
It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.
~ Plato
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
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.
~ Plato
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.
~ Plato
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
~ Plato
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
~ Plato
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
~ Plato
There is no such thing as a lovers’ oath.
~ Plato
The wisest have the most authority.
~ Plato
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.
~ Plato
Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
~ Plato
