Plato Quotes

“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.”
― Plato, Plato: Complete Works

“Whenever someone, on seeing something, realizes that that which he now sees wants to be like some other reality but falls short and cannot be like that other since it is inferior, do we agree that one who thinks this must have prior knowledge of that to which he says it is like, but deficiently so?”
― Plato, Plato: Complete Works

“For this," he said, "is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“Well, you know what happens to lovers: whenever they see a lyre, a garment or anything else that their beloved is accustomed to use, they know the lyre, and the image of the boy to whom it belongs comes into their mind.”
― Plato, Plato: Complete Works

“a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself agreeable to them; for from the good you will learn what is good, but if you mix with the bad you will lose the intelligence which you already have.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“The physician of the soul is aware that his patient will receive no nourishment unless he has been cleaned out; and the soul of the Great King himself, if he has not undergone this purification, is unclean and impure.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“The great enemy of Plato is the world, not exactly in the theological sense, yet in one not wholly different--the world as the hater of truth and lover of appearance, occupied in the pursuit of gain and pleasure rather than of knowledge, banded together against the few good and wise men, and devoid of true education.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“You wouldn’t know him if I told you the name. HIPPIAS: But I know right now he’s an ignoramus.”
― Plato, Complete Works

“He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth.”
― Plato, Complete Works

“Accordingly, no book can actually embody the knowledge of anything
of philosophical importance; only a mind can do that, since only a
mind can have this capacity to interpret and reinterpret its own understandings.”
― John M. Cooper, Plato: Complete Works

“But far more dangerous are the others, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods,”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works (31 Books)

“If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“cave”
― Plato, Plato: Complete Works

“Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says;”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works

“This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;--it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all,”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works (31 Books)

“For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works (31 Books)

“But a man whose actions do not agree with his words is an annoyance to me; and the better he speaks the more I hate him, and then I seem to be a hater of discourse.”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works

“I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works (31 Books)

“Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other.”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works

“There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father’s chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt.”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works

“SOCRATES: Then let me raise another question; there is such a thing as ‘having learned’? GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: And there is also ‘having believed’? GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: And is the ‘having learned’ the same as ‘having believed,’ and are learning and belief the same things? GORGIAS: In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same. SOCRATES: And your judgment is right, as you may ascertain in this way:— If a person were to say to you, ‘Is there, Gorgias, a false belief as well as a true?’—you would reply, if I am not mistaken, that there is. GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: Well, but is there a false knowledge as well as a true? GORGIAS: No. SOCRATES: No, indeed; and this again proves that knowledge and belief differ.”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works

“Cookery simulates the disguise of medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death.”
― Plato, Plato: The Complete Works (31 Books)

“SOCRATES: This, in turn, is to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do. In just this way, our two speeches placed all [266] mental derangements into one common kind.”
― Plato, Complete Works

“And what about these, Socrates? Things that might seem absurd, like hair and mud and dirt, or anything else totally undignified and worthless? Are [d] you doubtful whether or not you should say that a form is separate for each of these, too, which in turn is other than anything we touch with our hands?” “Not at all,” Socrates answered. “On the contrary, these things are in fact just what we see. Surely it’s too outlandish to think there is a form for them. Not that the thought that the same thing might hold in all cases hasn’t troubled me from time to time. Then, when I get bogged down in that, I hurry away, afraid that I may fall into some pit of nonsense and come to harm; but when I arrive back in the vicinity of the things we agreed a moment ago have forms, I linger there and occupy myself with them.” [e] “That’s because you are still young, Socrates,” said Parmenides, “and philosophy has not yet gripped you as, in my opinion, it will in the future, once you begin to consider none of the cases beneath your notice. Now, though, you still care about what people think, because of your youth.”
― Plato, Complete Works

“The clearest argument against Plato’s authorship is probably that Plato never wrote a work whose interpretation was as simple and straightforward as that of Alcibiades.”
― Plato, Plato: Complete Works

“The not- beautiful is as real as the beautiful, the not-just as the just. And the essence of the not-beautiful is to be separated from and opposed to a certain kind of existence which is termed beautiful. And this opposition and negation is the not-being of which we are in search, and is one kind of being.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;--this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God--when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato

“to suffer is better than to do evil;' and the art of rhetoric is described as only useful for the purpose of self-accusation.”
― Plato, The Complete Works of Plato