Plato

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

If a man neglects education he walks lame to the end of his life.

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.

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

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

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge.

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.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil and is far from being the greatest of all, too much cleverness and too much learning accompanied with ill bringing-up are far more fatal.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

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.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.

No one knows whether death which people fear to be the greatest evil may not be the greatest good.

Love is the joy of the good the wonder of the wise the amazement of the Gods.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study pursued under compulsion remains rooted in the memory.

A state arises as I conceive out of the needs of mankind, no one is self-sufficing but all of us have many wants.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

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

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

They do certainly give very strange and newfangled names to diseases.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much but with less power.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman, and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.

There is no such thing as a lovers' oath.

Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature, and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

There's a victory and defeat, the first and best of victories the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another but of himself.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

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.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

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

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

Then not only custom but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice and that justice is equality.

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

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?

Science is nothing but perception.

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

Courage is a kind of salvation.

Ignorance the root and stem of all evil.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state, since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Excess of liberty whether it lies in state or individuals seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Necessity... the mother of invention.

Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.

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.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

There are three classes of men, lovers of wisdom lovers of honor and lovers of gain.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Democracy... is a charming form of government full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

As the builders say the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind for thus the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

It is right to give every man his due.

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.

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

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

We do not learn, and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

Any man may easily do harm but not every man can do good to another.

To go to the world below having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice is the last and worst of all the evils.

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

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

To suffer the penalty of too much haste which is too little speed.

It is a common saying and in everybody's mouth that life is but a sojourn.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat which is the combat of life and greater than every other earthly conflict.

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

Philosophy is the highest music.

One man cannot practice many arts with success.

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

Love is a serious mental disease.

I never did anything worth doing by accident nor did any of my inventions come by accident, they came by work.

Life must be lived as play.

Your silence gives consent.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

When a Benefit is wrongly conferred the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

The gods' service is tolerable man's intolerable.

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 curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort any sort rather than no sort.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

When men speak ill of thee live so as nobody may believe them.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

Man never legislates but destinies and accidents happening in all sorts of ways legislate in all sorts of ways.

And what Socrates is the food of the soul? Surely I said knowledge is the food of the soul.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole and not that of any one class.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself, to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.

The learning and knowledge that we have is at the most but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

The good is the beautiful.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach or governs well who wants to govern.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher and philosophy begins in wonder.

Knowledge is true opinion.

He was a wise man who invented beer.

Man - a being in search of meaning.

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things but only what is just whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality and with greater ease when each man works at a single occupation in accordance with his natural gifts and at the right moment without meddling with anything else.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself and not upon other men has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation the man of manly character and of wisdom.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

States are as the men they grow out of human characters.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

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

Better a little which is well done than a great deal imperfectly.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying either at home or abroad, they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

No evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

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.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

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

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can, and to fly away is to become like God as far as this is possible, and to become like him is to become holy just and wise.

Democracy passes into despotism.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Twice and thrice over as they say good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

If particulars are to have meaning there must be universals.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches but the spirit of reverence.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods and of every good to man.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.

They certainly give very strange names to diseases.

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

There are two things a person should never be angry at what they can help and what they cannot.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

The wisest have the most authority.