Quotes from Plato

Music is to the mind as air is to the body.

Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.

Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.

What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.

Music is that which takes silence and brings it to life.

He who is of a calm and happy nature, will hardly feel the pressure of age

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.

The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of God.

This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.

So the nature required to make a really noble Guardian of our commonwealth will be swift and strong, spirited, and philosophic.

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.

The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful

Adultery is the injury of nature.

Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics.

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

No man's nature is able to know what is best for the social state of man; or, knowing, always able to do what is best.

In a democracy only will the freeman of nature design to dwell.

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

Don't quarrel with your parents even if you are on the right.

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.

From all wild beasts, a child is the most difficult to handle.

Better to complete a small task well, than to do much imperfectly.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war

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