Explore Quotes by Plato

There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.

Better to complete a small task well, than to do much imperfectly.

It is through geometry that one purifies the eye of the soul.

The God of Love lives in a state of need.

Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets.

That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.

Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

Avoid compulsion and let early education be a matter of amusement. Young children learn by games; compulsory education cannot remain in the soul.

Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.

We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

Not by force shall the children learn, but through play

Be kind, for everyone is having a hard battle.

Complacent ignorance is the most lethal sickness of the soul

The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage.

Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.

But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.

The good man is the only excellent musician, because he gives forth a perfect harmony not with a lyre or other instrument but with the whole of his life.

Welcome out of the cave, my friend. It's a bit colder out here, but the stars are just beautiful.

This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.

The good, of course, is always beautiful, and the beautiful never lacks proportion.