Top 200 Plato Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

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

— Plato

159. “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

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

— Plato

161. “But I cannot advise that we remain as we are. And if any one laughs at us for going to school at our age, I would quote to them the authority of Homer, who says, that ‘Modesty is not good for a needy man.’ Let us then, regardless of what may be said of us, make the education of the youths our own education.”

— Plato

162. “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

163. “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

164. “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

165. “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

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

— Plato

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

170. “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

171. “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

172. “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

173. “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

174. “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

175. “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

176. “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

177. “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

178. “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

179. “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

180. “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

181. “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

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

— Plato

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

— Plato

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

— Plato

185. “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.”

— Plato

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

— Plato

187. “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

188. “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

189. “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

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

— Plato

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

— Plato

192. “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

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

— Plato

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

— Plato

195. “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

196. “For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.”

— Plato

197. “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

198. “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

199. “The fairest music is that which delights the best and best educated.”

— Plato

200. “The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.”

— Plato