Plato was an Athenian philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, founder of the Platonist school of thought, and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Profoundly inspirational Plato quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Plato Quotes
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. Plato
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. Plato
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. Plato
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
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile. Plato
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
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
Only the dead have seen the end of war. Plato
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. Plato
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. Plato
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
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
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. Plato
The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. Plato
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. Plato
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
Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one another’s company? For if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two. Plato
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. 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. Plato
Love is a serious mental disease. Plato
Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. Plato
One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. Plato
Death is not the worst that can happen to men. Plato
The measure of a man is what he does with power. Plato
Desires are only the lack of something and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none, or very slight ones. Plato
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things. Plato
Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil. Plato
There is truth in wine and children. Plato
Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil. Plato
Human behavior flows from three main sources desire, emotion, and knowledge. Plato
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. Plato
The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings. Plato
No human thing is of serious importance. Plato
Education is teaching our children to desire the right things. Plato
There is no such thing as a lover’s oath. Plato
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain. 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. Plato
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
Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself. Plato
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. Plato
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. Plato
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. Plato
Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind. Plato
The beginning is the most important part of the work. Plato
Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men; for we might have lived dishonourably, but have preferred to die honourably rather than bring you and your children into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers and forefathers. Plato
The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful. Plato
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands. Plato
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
The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. Plato
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state? Plato
But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power. Plato
The greatest wealth is to live content with little. Plato
Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike. Plato
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Plato
Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends. Plato
Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole. Plato
Was not this what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom to know what is known and what is unknown to us? Plato
An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers. Plato
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it. Plato
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education. Plato
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
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them. Plato
No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern. Plato
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
He whom love touches not walks in darkness . Plato
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
The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one’s education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died. Plato
Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others. Plato
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
Life must be lived as play. Plato
Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others. Plato
It’s not at all uncommon to find a person’s desires compelling him to go against his reason, and to see him cursing himself and venting his passion on the source of the compulsion within him. It’s as if there were two warring factions, with passion fighting on the side of reason. But I’m sure you won’t claim that you had ever, in yourself or in anyone else, met a case of passion siding with his desires against the rational mind, when the rational mind prohibits resistance. Plato
I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning. Plato
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life. Plato
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
This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are .Plato
For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy. Plato
That’s what education should be, I said, the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn’t be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn’t facing the right way. Plato
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand. Plato
