Top 200 Plato Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 5

101. “There are two wolves inside of you, Glaucon. Anyone can have an alpha-beta pair; rarer are the alpha-alpha and beta-beta ones. Most precious of all are those who have stepped out of the Cave; the philosopher-kings who may rule society: the sigma-alpha pair.”

— Plato

102. “Such was the end of our comrade, Echecrates, a man who, we would say, was of all those we have known the best, and also the wisest and the most upright.”

— Plato

103. “Isn’t the phrase self-mastery absurd? I mean, anyone who is his own master is also his own slave, of course, and vice-versa, since it’s the same person who is the subject in all these expressions.”

— Plato

104. “The true lover of knowledge is always striving after being – that is his nature; he will not rest in the multiplicity of individuals which is an appearance only, but will go on – the keen edge will not be blunted, nor the force of his desire abate until he have attained the knowledge of the true nature of every essence by a sympathetic and kindred power in the soul.”

— Plato

105. “So where power is in the hands of a savage and uneducated tyrant, anyone who is greatly his superior will doubtless be an object of fear to the ruler, and never able to be on terms of genuine friendship with him.”

— Plato

106. “Now in the days of Cronos there existed a law respecting the destiny of man, which has always been, and still continues to be in Heaven, – that he who has lived all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he is dead, to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the reach of evil; but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus.”

— Plato

107. “Everything that is responsible for creating something out of nothing is a kind of poetry; and so all the creations of every craft and profession are themselves a kind of poetry, and everyone who practices a craft is a poet.”

— Plato

108. “He who is the victim of his passions and the slave of pleasure will of course desire to make his beloved as agreeable to himself as possible.”

— Plato

109. “For the uneducated, when they engage in argument about anything, give no thought to the truth about the subject of discussion but are only eager that those present will accept the position they have set forth. I differ from them only to this extent: I shall not be eager to get the agreement of those present that what I say is true, except incidentally, but I shall be very eager that I should myself be thoroughly convinced that things are so.”

— Plato

110. “And the same will be true of the orator and the oratory in relation to all other arts. The orator need have no knowledge of the truth about thongs; it is enough for him to have discovered a knack of persuading the ignorant that he seems to know more than the experts.”

— Plato

111. “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.”

— Plato

112. “Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.”

— Plato

113. “Every class, then, has plurality of being and infinity of not-being.”

— Plato

114. “I understand; you mean that he will be a ruler in the city of which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only; for I do not believe that there is such an one anywhere on earth? In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in fact, is no matter; for he will live after the manner of that city, having nothing to do with any other.”

— Plato

115. “For a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.”

— Plato

116. “We should not allow into our minds the conviction that argumentation has nothing sound about it; much rather we should believe that it is we who are not yet sound and that we must take courage and be eager to attain soundness, you and the others for the sake of your whole life still to come, and I for the sake of death itself.”

— Plato

117. “O beloved Pan and all ye other gods of this place, grant to me that I be made beautiful in my soul within, and that all external possessions be in harmony with my inner man. May I consider the wise man rich; and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure.”

— Plato

118. “Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says;.”

— Plato

119. “A mere speck that nevertheless constantly contributed to the good of the whole – is you, you who have forgotten that nothing is created except to provide the entire universe with a life of prosperity. You forget that creation is not for your benefit: you exist for the sake of the universe.”

— Plato

120. “May we not say that the most gifted minds, when they are ill-educated, become pre-eminently bad? Do not great crimes and the spirit of pure evil spring out of a fulness of nature ruined by education rather than from any inferiority whereas weak natures are scarcely capable of any very great good or very great evil?”

— Plato

121. “The law is not concerned with making any one class in the city do outstandingly well, but is contriving to produce this condition in the city as a whole.”

— Plato

122. “EUTHYPHRO: The truth is, Socrates, that I’m at a loss as to how to say what I want to say; somehow or other whatever we put forward has a habit of moving around and refusing to stay wherever we try to make it stand.”

— Plato

123. “Both knowledge and truth are beautiful things, but the good is other and more beautiful than they.”

— Plato

124. “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.”

— Plato

125. “CALLICLES: There is no end to the rubbish this fellow speaks. Tell me, Socrates, aren’t you ashamed at your age of laying these verbal traps and counting it a god-send if a man makes a slip of the tongue?”

— Plato

126. “SOCRATES: First, then, let us consider whether the doing of injustice exceeds the suffering in the consequent pain: Do the injurers suffer more than the injured? POLUS: No, Socrates; certainly not.”

— Plato

127. “Then not he who does evil, but he who does good, is temperate? Yes, he said; and you, friend, would agree. No matter whether I should or not; just now, not what I think, but what you are saying, is the point at issue. Well, he answered; I mean to say, that he who does evil, and not good, is not temperate; and that he is temperate who does good, and not evil: for temperance I define in plain words to be the doing of good actions.”

— Plato

128. “Because you seem not to be aware that any one who has an intellectual affinity to Socrates and enters into conversation with him is liable to be drawn into an argument; and whatever subject he may start, he will be continually carried round and round by him, until at last he finds that he has to give an account both of his present and past life; and when he is once entangled, Socrates will not let him go until he has completely and thoroughly sifted him.”

— Plato

129. “Have you never observed how invincible and unconquerable is spirit and how the presence of it makes the soul of any creature to be absolutely fearless and indomitable?”

— Plato

130. “Once you have the means of life, you must practice virtue.”

— Plato

131. “What I do not know, I don’t think I do.”

— Plato

132. “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.”

— Plato

133. “When the modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.”

— Plato

134. “In a city of good men, if it came into being, the citizens would fight in order not to rule, just as they now do in order to rule.”

— Plato

135. “But then, I said, speaking the truth and paying your debts is not a correct definition of justice. Quite correct, Socrates, if Simonides is to be believed, said Polemarchus interposing. I.”

— Plato

136. “Or do you think it possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of its courts have no force but are nullified and set at naught by private individuals?”

— Plato

137. “Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her.”

— Plato

138. “Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others.”

— Plato

139. “In the course of the argument Socrates remarks that the controversial nature of morals and religion arises out of the difficulty of verifying them.”

— Plato

140. “Because to the mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality,′ she replied; ’and if, as has been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality.”

— Plato

141. “Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the danger;.”

— Plato

142. “Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.”

— Plato

143. “For knowing their own inferiority, I suspect that they are too glad of equality.”

— Plato

144. “But I have no time for such things; and the reason, my friend, is this. I am still unable, as the Delphic inscription orders, to know myself; and it really seems to be ridiculous to look into other things before I have understood that.”

— Plato

145. “I dare say that you remember, and therefore I need not remind you, that a lover, if he is worthy of the name, ought to show his love, not to some one part of that which he loves, but to the whole.”

— Plato

146. “This is the truth of the matter, men of Athens: wherever a man has taken a position that he believes to be best, or has been placed by his commander, there he must I think remain and face danger, without a thought for death or anything else, rather than disgrace.”

— Plato

147. “Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet Anytus – they cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than himself.”

— Plato

148. “And is not shrewdness a quickness or cleverness of the soul, and not a quietness?”

— Plato

149. “Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils, – nor.”

— Plato

150. “From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, I draw the following inferences: – Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else.”

— Plato