Quotes from Plato

Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other.

Inasmuch as philosophers only are able to grasp the eternal and unchangeable, and those who wander in the region of the many and variable are not philosophers, I must ask you which of the two classes should be the rulers of our State? And how can we rightly answer that question? Whichever of the two are best able to guard the laws and institutions of our State—let them be our guardians. Very

Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

The civilized East is immeasurably in advance of any savage tribes; the Greeks and Romans have improved upon the East; the Christian nations have been stricter in their views of the marriage relation than any of the ancients.

And if we only have a guardian who has this knowledge our State will be perfectly ordered? Of course, he replied; but I wish that you would tell me whether you conceive this supreme principle of the good to be knowledge or pleasure, or different from either? Aye

Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly. (Socrates)

Poderoso Júpiter, dadnos bienes; ya te los pidamos o no, y aleja de nosotros los males, aun cuando te los pidamos.»

I would not swear that my argument is right down to the last word, but I would fight to the last breath, both in word and deed, that we will be better men – brave instead of lazy – if we will believe we must search for the things we do not know; if we will refuse to believe it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that there is no point in looking.

I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any elaborate defence is unnecessary, but I know only too well how many are the enmities which I have incurred, and this is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed;—not Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many good men, and will probably be the death of many more; there is no danger of my being the last of them.

To the passionate language of Parmenides, Plato replies in a strain equally passionate:--What! has not Being mind? and is not Being capable of being known? and, if this is admitted, then capable of being affected or acted upon?--in motion, then, and yet not wholly incapable of rest. Already we have been compelled to attribute opposite determinations to Being. And the answer to the difficulty about Being may be equally the answer to the difficulty about Not-being.

Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of Plato's in which the falsehood of all mankind is reflected.

mean that we must mount them on horses in their earliest youth, and when they have learnt to ride, take them on horseback to see war: the horses must not be spirited and warlike, but the most tractable and yet the swiftest that can be had. In this way they will get an excellent view of what is hereafter to be their own business; and if there is danger they have only to follow their elder leaders and escape. I

The clearest argument against Plato's authorship is probably that Plato never wrote a work whose interpretation was as simple and straightforward as that of Alcibiades.

Ali,srecnice moj,mozda sam ja nista,a ti to ne primecujes.

ought the just to injure any one at all?

What else can one do in the time before sunset?

To refer a subject to a negative class is unmeaning, unless the 'not' is a mere modification of the positive, as in the example of 'not honourable' and 'dishonourable'; or unless the class is characterized by the absence rather than the presence of a particular quality.

The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his sneses, and the mind is no longer in him.

And this is proved by the fact that when he obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.

Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,--for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know. (Socrates)

Please do not be offended if I tell you the truth. No man [e] on earth who conscientiously opposes either you or any other organized democracy, and flatly prevents a great many wrongs and illegalities from taking place in the state to which he belongs, can possibly escape with his life.

question—What is justice, stripped of appearances?

As the Pre- Socratic philosopher failed to distinguish between the universal and the true, while he placed the particulars of sense under the false and apparent, so Plato appears to identify negation with falsehood, or is unable to distinguish them. The greatest service rendered by him to mental science is the recognition of the communion of classes, which, although based by him on his account of 'Not-being,' is independent of it.

Then a slice of our neighbours' land will be wanted by us for pasture and tillage, and they will want a slice of ours, if, like ourselves, they exceed the limit of necessity, and give themselves up to the unlimited accumulation of wealth? That, Socrates, will be inevitable. And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not? Most certainly, he replied.