Explore Quotes by Plato

That a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.

You cannot conceive the many without the one.

I will prove by my life that my critics are liars.

The passionate are like men standing on their heads, they see all things the wrong way.

And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.

Excellent things are rare.

Pleasure is the bait of sin

By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name.

Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.

The elements of instruction should be presented to the mind in childhood, but not with any compulsion.

As there are misanthropists or haters of men, so also are there misologists, or haters of ideas.

A good education consists in knowing how to sing and dance well.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable, inasmuch as he has the fountain of reason in him not yet regulated.

Perfect wisdom has four parts: Wisdom, the principle of doing things aright. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.

More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.

The seen is the changing, the unseen is the unchanging.

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.

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Music has the capacity to touch the innermost reaches of the soul and music gives flight to the imagination.

So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well.