Plato > Quotes

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― 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

“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

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Plato

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
― 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

“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, The Symposium

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”
― Plato, The Republic

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
― Plato

“Love is a serious mental disease.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

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

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
― Plato

“good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”
― Plato

“If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.”
― Plato

“I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts.”
― Plato

“...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment...”
― Plato, The Symposium

“Those who tell the stories rule society.”
― Plato

“There is truth in wine and children”
― Plato, Symposium / Phaedrus

“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. ”
― Plato

“Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.”
― Plato

“The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
― Plato

“There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”
― 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

“You should not honor men more than truth.”
― Plato

“There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”
― Plato

“When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.”
― Plato

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
― Plato, The Republic