Selected Quotes By Plato
"Love is the pursuit of the whole."
Plato, Love
"Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men."
Plato, Success
"Nothing beautiful without struggle."
Plato, Life
"Writing is the geometry of the soul."
Plato, Art
"Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others."
Plato, Kindness
"There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless."
Plato, Society
"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature."
Plato, Love
"Excellence" is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act "rightly" because we are "excellent", in fact we achieve "excellence" by acting "rightly"."
Plato, Life
"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, Life
"You're my star, a stargazer too, and I wish that I were heaven, with a billion eyes to look at you."
Plato, Love
"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder."
Plato, Life
"Character is simply habit long continued."
Plato, Life
"An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education."
Plato, Love
"Death is not the worst that can happen to men."
Plato, Death
"Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole."
Plato, Love
"The greatest wealth is to live content with little."
Plato, Wealth
"Necessity is the mother of invention."
Plato, Life
"A house that has a library in it has a soul."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses."
Plato, Society
"The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom, Love
"The beginning is the most important part of the work."
Plato, Work
"When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them."
Plato, Criticism
"You should not honor men more than truth."
Plato, Truth
"There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot."
Plato, Anger and Fighting
"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, Government
"There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."
Plato, Love
"Courage is knowing what not to fear."
Plato, Courage
"Education is teaching our children to desire the right things."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment..."
Plato, Love, Friendship
"If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things."
Plato, Sex
"Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The measure of a man is what he does with power."
Plato, Power
"good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
Plato, Society
"One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
Plato, Government
"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."
Plato, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself."
Plato, Government
"According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves."
Plato, Belief
"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, Intelligence/Wisdom
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
Plato, Society
"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
Plato, Anger and Fighting
"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, Society
"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet."
Plato, Love
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle."