Plato Quotes

Reality is created by the mind. We can change our reality by changing our mind.

Science is nothing but perception.

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

And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.

Wealth ... and poverty: the one is the parent of luxury and indolence and the other of meanness and vicious-ness and both of discontent.

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.

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

Be kind, because everyone is having a really hard time.

A dog has the soul of a philosopher.

Necessity who is the mother of our invention.

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.

A good education is another name for happiness.

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

The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.

Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.

No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.

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

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Beauty, like an animal, doesn’t always behave.

Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Writing is the geometry of the soul.

Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Knowledge is the food of the soul.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are free from the grasp, not of one mad master only, but of many.

The tools that would teach men their own use would be beyond price.

for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.

let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.

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

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

a life without investigation is not worth living

A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.

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

We reveal ourselves in the metaphors we choose for depicting the cosmos in miniature.

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.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Those who don't know must learn from those who do.

Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.

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

Justice is useful when money is useless.

But I don't think we shall quarrel about a word - the subject of our inquiry is too important for that.

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

The god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it's almost impossible to stamp out.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year for it is wrong to add fire to fire.