Plato Quotes

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men

Even the gods love jokes

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.

The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics

I think a man`s duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

The wisest have the most authority

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Someday, in the distant future, our grandchildren`s grandchildren will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge.

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul

Homosexuality, is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce."

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

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.

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

Moderation, which consists in an indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance.

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.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Abstinence is the surety of temperance

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.