Quotes from Plato

The sphincter which serve to discharge our stomachs has dilations and contractions proper to itself, independent of our wishes or even opposed to them.

The right is nothing more than what benefits the powerful.

Crees con formalidad que entre los dioses hay guerras, odios, combates y todas las demás pasiones tan sorprendentes que los poetas y pintores nos representan en sus poesías y en sus cuadros

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

The qualities, which a man seeks in his beloved, are those characteristics of his own soul, whether he knows it or not.

Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.

I am on the brink of death, while you will carry on living. The judgment of which is truly better rests only within the knowledge of God.

So, Euthyphro, piety then, should be regarded as a reciprocal exchange between Gods and humans.

Since there has been shown to be false speech and false opinion, there may be imitations of real existences, and out of this condition of the mind an art of deception may arise

ION: Why, Socrates, the reason is, that my countrymen, the Ephesians, are the servants and soldiers of Athens, and do not need a general; and you and Sparta are not likely to have me, for you think that you have enough generals of your own.

that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.

SOCRATES: Then hear me, Gorgias, for I am quite sure that if there ever was a man who entered on the discussion of a matter from a pure love of knowing the truth, I am such a one, and I should say the same of you. GORGIAS: What is coming, Socrates?

Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

SOCRATES: Will you understand my answer? Rhetoric, according to my view, is the ghost or counterfeit of a part of politics. POLUS: And noble or ignoble? SOCRATES: Ignoble, I should say, if I am compelled to answer, for I call what is bad ignoble: though I doubt whether you understand what I was saying before. GORGIAS: Indeed, Socrates, I cannot say that I understand myself.

When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing,—then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing.

So I appear to be wiser, at least than him, in just this one small respect: that when I don't know things, I don't think that I do either.

There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of Athens, at the vote of condemnation. I expected it, and am only surprised that the votes are so nearly equal; for I had thought that the majority against me would have been far larger; but now, had thirty votes gone over to the other side, I should have been acquitted

Now, if the truth of things is always in our soul, the soul is immortal.

After a while the desire of self-preservation gathered them into cities; but when they were gathered together, having no art of government, they evil intreated one another, and were again in process of dispersion and destruction. Zeus feared that the entire race would be exterminated, and so he sent Hermes to them, bearing reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds of friendship and conciliation.

Shall this be the manner in which I am to distribute justice and reverence among men, or shall I give them to all?' 'To all,' said Zeus; 'I should like them all to have a share; for cities cannot exist, if a few only share in the virtues, as in the arts. And further, make a law by my order, that he who has no part in reverence and justice shall be put to death, for he is a plague of the state.

Death may even be the greatest of all good things for a human being - no one knows, yet people fear it as if they knew for sure that it's the greatest of bad things.

Anyone who's really fighting for justice must live a private life as a citizen and not as a public figure if he's going to survive even a short time.

But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again. He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue is capable of being taught.