If you’re looking for some inspiration, check out Plato quotes – In this blog post, we’ll take a look at some of the best quotes from the ancient philosopher. Whether you’re a student looking for a little help with your studies, or just someone who enjoys a good quote, you’ll find plenty of wisdom and humor.
A. Plato was a very influential philosopher in ancient Greece. He was born in 428 BC, and is considered one of the most important philosophers of all time. Plato’s philosophy is based on the idea that there is a world beyond what we can see and experience. This world is perfect and can be known through reason. Plato also believed that the soul is immortal, and that our purpose in life is to learn about this perfect world.
Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” is one of his most famous works. In it, he describes a group of people who have been held captive in a cave since birth. They see only the shadows of things passing in front of a fire behind them, and they believe these shadows to be reality.
One day, a prisoner is freed and comes out of the cave into the sunlight. He is initially blinded by the light, but eventually he becomes used to it and sees the world as it truly is. The other prisoners, who have never left the cave, are not happy with this new development and try to kill the man who has seen the outside world.
Plato’s point is that the reality we see is not always the reality that is. We may be content with the views we see from our cave, but that doesn’t mean they are accurate.
Here are some of our favorite Plato quotes.
Plato Quotes
- “The first and best victory is to conquer self”
2. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
3. “Never discourage anyone…who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
4. You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
5. “I’m trying to think, don’t confuse me with facts.”
6. “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. ”
7. “Death is not the worst that can happen to men.”
8. “Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.”
9. “Be kind, because everyone is having a really hard time.”
10. “Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
11. “There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”
12. “A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men. ”
13. “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
Plato Quotes on Life
14. “People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.”
15. “The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
16. “The greatest wealth is to live content with little.”
17. “Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others. ”
18. “If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”
19. “True friendship can exist only between equals.”
20. “To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one’s own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.”
21. “There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”
22. “There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.”
23. “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”
24. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
25. “Character is simply habit long continued.”
26. “Courage is a kind of salvation. Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
27. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
28. “The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”
Plato Quotes About Education
29. “Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.”
30. “Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
31. “Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.”
32. “A house that has a library in it has a soul.”
33. “No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.”
34. “The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one’s education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died.”
35. “Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance”
36. “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
37. “I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning”
38. “Books are immortal sons defying their sires.”
39. “The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.”
40. “Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”
Plato Quotes on Leadership and Politics
41. “good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”
42. “One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
43. “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
44. “Those who tell the stories rule society.”
45. “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
46. “You should not honor men more than truth.”
47. “In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill… we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.”
Plato Quotes on Love
48. “The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings.”
49. “Love is a serious mental disease.”
50. “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
51. “He whom loves touches not walks in darkness.”
52. “Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”
53. “Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.”
54. “Love is the pursuit of the whole.”
55. “Love’ is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”
56. “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
57. “Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.”