QUOTES by Plato
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“It is our duty to select the best and most dependable theory that human intelligence can supply, and use it as a raft to ride the seas of life.”
Quote by -Plato
“Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.”
Quote by -Plato
“The first and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.”
Quote by -Plato
“O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.”
Quote by -Plato
“if you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange...they all consider death a great evil...and the brave among them face death, when they do, for fear of greater evils...therefore, it is fear and terror that make all men brave, except for philosophers. yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice...what of the moderate among them? is their experience not similar?...they master certain pleasures because they are mastered by others...i fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that they only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom.”
Quote by -Plato
“Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.”
Quote by -Plato
“But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.”
Quote by -Plato
“To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.”
Quote by -Plato
“He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse”
Quote by -Plato
“He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration, in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.”
Quote by -Plato
“... when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won't laugh mindlessly, but he'll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brillance.”
Quote by -Plato
“We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it.”
Quote by -Plato
“The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.”
Quote by -Plato
“Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.”
Quote by -Plato
“He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act”
Quote by -Plato
“…it’s better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just.”
Quote by -Plato
“We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection.”
Quote by -Plato
“It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.”
Quote by -Plato
“There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric....But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.”
Quote by -Plato
“Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool”
Quote by -Plato
“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”
Quote by -Plato
“Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from dakness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. (Included in the introduction to "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes)”
Quote by -Plato
“What shall we say about those spectators, then, who can see a plurality of beautiful things, but not beauty itself, and who are incapable of following if someone else tries to lead them to it, and who can see many moral actions, but not morality itself, and so on? That they only ever entertain beliefs, and do not know any of the things they believe?”
Quote by -Plato
“Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.”
Quote by -Plato
“Then we shan’t regard anyone as a lover of knowledge or wisdom who is fussy about what he studies…”
Quote by -Plato
“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long …arousing and persuading and reproaching…You will not easily find another like me.”
Quote by -Plato
“The man deserved his fate, deny it who can; yes, but the fate did not deserve the man.”
Quote by -Plato
“If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.”
Quote by -Plato
“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognise that the same thing happens to the soul.”
Quote by -Plato
“Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.”
Quote by -Plato
“And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.”
Quote by -Plato
“No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.”
Quote by -Plato
“And I understood then that I was a fool when I told you I would take my turn in singing the honours of Love, and admitted I was terribly clever in love affairs, whereas it seems I really had no idea how a eulogy ought to be made. For I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth.”
Quote by -Plato
“And Agathon said, It is probable, Socrates, that I knew nothing of what I had said.
Quote by -Plato
“What a strange thing that which men call pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with what is thought to be its opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is almost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head.”
Quote by -Plato