Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow... even if that someone is yourself!
PlatoRead
Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the basis of morality by suggesting that pleasure and pain are the only standards we use to determine what is good.
In this quote, Plato challenges the idea of goodness by asking whether it can be defined by any other criteria than the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. He invites us to reflect on our values and motives, prompting a deeper examination of human behavior and the foundations of our moral judgments. This inquiry into the nature of goodness suggests that our actions are often driven by a fundamental desire to enhance pleasure and diminish suffering, rather than any abstract notion of morality.
Themes
PleasurePainMoralityGoodnessPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a ethics class discussion on moral philosophy, this quote can be used to provoke thought.
More from Plato
All quotes →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.
PlatoRead
...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty.
PlatoRead
Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.
PlatoRead
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
PlatoRead
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
PlatoRead
Similar quotes
Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.
AnaxagorasRead
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. AudenRead
In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.
Stefan ZweigRead
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.
Leon TrotskyRead
Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
Herman MelvilleRead
I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.
John LennonRead