Quotes from Plato

That's what education should be, I said, the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.

In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society.

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

All is flux, nothing stays still

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

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age.

Knowledge is the food of the soul.

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.

Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.

Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.

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

Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.

Ideas are the source of all things

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.

when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.

Time is the moving image of reality

Philosophy is the highest music.

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

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.

According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.