Top 200 Plato Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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.”

— Plato

152. “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.”

— Plato

153. “Now early life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others.”

— Plato

154. “It is not Love absolutely that is good or praiseworthy, but only that Love which impels meant to love aright.”

— Plato

155. “I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better.”

— Plato

156. “Of old the saying, “Nothing too much,” appeared to be, and really was, well said. For he whose happiness rests with himself, if possible, wholly, and if not, as far as is possible, – who is not hanging in suspense on other men, or changing with the vicissitude of their fortune, – has his life ordered for the best.”

— Plato

157. “You might easily be annoyed with me as people are when they are aroused from a doze, and strike out at me;.”

— Plato

158. “Virtue is free, and as a man honours or dishonours her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser – God is justified.”

— Plato

159. “SOCRATES: I wish you would frankly tell me, Ion, what I am going to ask of you: When you produce the greatest effect upon the audience in the recitation of some striking passage, such as the apparition of Odysseus leaping forth on the floor, recognized by the suitors and casting his arrows at his feet, or the description of Achilles rushing at Hector, or the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam, – are you in your right mind?”

— Plato

160. “There’s no difficulty in choosing vice in abundance: the road is smooth and it’s hardly any distance to where it lives. But the gods have put sweat in the way of goodness, and a long, rough, steep road.”

— Plato

161. “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?”

— Plato

162. “For wherever a man’s place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying.”

— Plato

163. “It looks, Socrates, as though I didn’t know what I was talking about then.”

— Plato

164. “But a man whose actions do not agree with his words is an annoyance to me; and the better he speaks the more I hate him, and then I seem to be a hater of discourse.”

— Plato

165. “To them, therefore, I assign in my speech the first place, and the second to those who fought and conquered in the sea fights at Salamis and Artemisium; for of them, too, one might have many things to say – of the assaults which they endured by sea and land, and how they repelled them.”

— Plato

166. “Try to pay attention to me,“, she said, ” as best as you can. You see, the man who has been thus far guided in matters of Love, who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving: all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature...”

— Plato

167. “People’s souls give up much more easily in hard study than in physical training, since the pain – being peculiar to them and not shared with their body – is more their own.”

— Plato

168. “Then whatever the soul possesses, to that she comes bearing life? Yes, certainly. And is there any opposite to life? There is, he said. And what is that? Death.”

— Plato

169. “The unjust man enjoys life better than the just.” book 2.”

— Plato

170. “But can that which does not exist have anything pertaining or belonging to it? Of course not. Then the one has no name, nor is there any description or knowledge or perception or opinion of it... And it is neither named nor described nor thought of nor known, nor does any existing thing perceive it.”

— Plato

171. “Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion.”

— Plato

172. “Well, 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.”

— Plato

173. “Cronos, then lord of the world, knew that no mortal nature could endure the temptations of power, and therefore he appointed demons or demi-gods, who are of a superior race, to have dominion over man, as man has dominion over the animals.”

— Plato

174. “POLUS: What! and does all happiness consist in this? SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, Polus, that is my doctrine; the men and women who are gentle and good are also happy, as I maintain, and the unjust and evil are miserable.”

— Plato

175. “Mais on ne saurait mieux le faire qu’avec une.”

— Plato

176. “Having grasped this principle, it reverses itself and, keeping hold of what follow from it, comes down to a conclusion, making no use of anything visible at all, but only of forms themselves, moving on through forms to forms, and ending in forms.”

— Plato

177. “For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means?”

— Plato

178. “No science or art considers or enjoins the interest of the stronger or superior, but only the interest of the subject and weaker.”

— Plato

179. “O that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speaks the truth. For consider what a very commonplace and trivial things this which I have said – a thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same.”

— Plato

180. “After a moment’s pause, in which he made a real manly effort to think, he said: My opinion is, Socrates, that temperance makes a man ashamed or modest, and that temperance is the same as modesty. Very good, I said; and did you not admit, just now, that temperance is noble?”

— Plato

181. “I was attached to this city by the god – though it seems a ridiculous thing to say – as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company.”

— Plato

182. “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.”

— Plato

183. “Wenn etwas irgendwie wird, oder irgend etwas leidet: so wird es nicht, weil es ein Werdendes ist, sondern weil es wird ist es ein Werdendes; noch weil es ein Leidendes ist leidet es; sondern weil es leidet, ist es ein Leidendes.”

— Plato

184. “I was hoping that you would instruct me in the nature of piety and impiety; and then I might have cleared myself of Meletus and his indictment. I would have told him that I had been enlightened by Euthyphro, and had given up rash innovations and speculations, in which I indulged only through ignorance, and that now I am about to lead a better life.”

— Plato

185. “And is it not best to understand what is said, whether at the writing-master’s or the music-master’s, or anywhere else, not as quietly as possible, but as quickly as possible? Yes.”

— Plato

186. “All these were lovers and emulators and disciples of the culture of the Lacedaemonians, and any one may perceive that their wisdom was of this character; consisting of short memorable sentences, which they severally uttered. And they met together and dedicated in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, as the first-fruits of their wisdom, the far-famed inscriptions, which are in all men’s mouths – ‘Know thyself,’ and ‘Nothing too much.”

— Plato

187. “As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion. And as intellect is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to the perception of shadows.”

— Plato

188. “And I assert that those men are the fathers not only of ourselves, but of our liberties and of the liberties of all who are on the continent, for that was the action to which the Hellenes looked back when they ventured to fight for their own safety in the battles which ensued: they became disciples of the men of Marathon.”

— Plato

189. “What has caused my reputation is none other than a certain kind of wisdom. What kind of wisdom? Human wisdom, perhaps.”

— Plato

190. “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.”

— Plato

191. “The very good and the very wicked are both quite rare, and that most men are between those extremes.”

— Plato

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

— Plato

193. “At that point they all agreed not to get drunk that evening; they decided to drink only as much as pleased them.”

— Plato

194. “And that reputation was a true one, for the defeat which came upon us was our own doing. We were never conquered by others, and to this day we are still unconquered by them; but we were our own conquerors, and received defeat at our own hands.”

— Plato

195. “Then, my good friend, I said, do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find out the natural bent.”

— Plato

196. “NICIAS: To that I quite agree, if Socrates is willing to take them under his charge. I should not wish for any one else to be the tutor of Niceratus. But I observe that when I mention the matter to him he recommends to me some other tutor and refuses himself. Perhaps he may be more ready to listen to you, Lysimachus.”

— Plato

197. “I, on the other hand, have a convincing witness that I speak the truth, my poverty.”

— Plato

198. “The only office of state which I ever held, O men of Athens, was that of senator: the tribe Antiochis, which is my tribe, had the presidency at the trial of the generals who had not taken up the bodies of the slain after the battle of Arginusae; and you proposed to try them in a body, contrary to law, as you all thought afterwards;.”

— Plato

199. “SOCRATES: And you would admit once more, my good sir, that great power is a benefit to a man if his actions turn out to his advantage, and that this is the meaning of great power; and if not, then his power is an evil and is no power. But let us look at the matter in another way: – do we not acknowledge that the things of which we were speaking, the infliction of death, and exile, and the deprivation of property are sometimes a good and sometimes not a good?”

— Plato

200. “You’re not thinking straight, sir, if you think that a man who’s any use at all should give any opposing weight to the risk of living or dying, instead of looking to this alone whenever he does anything: whether his actions are just or unjust, the deeds of a good or bad man.”

— Plato