Plato Quotes About Art

We have collected for you the TOP of Plato's best quotes about Art! Here are collected all the quotes about Art starting from the birthday of the Philosopher – 428 BC! We hope you will be inspired to new achievements with our constantly updated collection of quotes. At the moment, this page contains 32 sayings of Plato about Art. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.

  • At the Egyptian city of Naucratis there was a famous old god whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis was sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters.

    Plato (2010). “The Works of Plato: The Trial and Death of Socrates”, p.442, Cosimo, Inc.
  • In one sense it is evident that the art of kingship does include the art of lawmaking. But the political ideal is not full authority for laws but rather full authority for a man who understands the art of kingship and has kingly ability.

  • The true musician is attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre... for he truly has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged in the Dorian mode. Such a one makes me joyous with the sound of his voice, so eager am I in drinking in his words.

  • God ever geometrizes.

    Attributed in Plutarch, Moralia
  • If someone separated the art of counting and measuring and weighing from all the other arts, what was left of each (of the others) would be, so to speak, insignificant.

  • Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

  • All well bred men should have mastered the art of singing and dancing.

  • The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death.

  • He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.

  • Romantic Art: The Hearts Awakening - Bouguereau At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.

  • For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.

  • To begin with the wine jar in learning the potter's art.

    Plato (1871). “Gorgias. Philebus. Parmenides. Theaetetus. Sophist. Statesman”, p.106
  • The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of God.

  • [M]ere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion.

    Plato (2015). “Plato: The Complete Works: From the greatest Greek philosopher, known for The Republic, Symposium, Apology, Phaedrus, Laws, Crito, Phaedo, Timaeus, Meno, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Parmenides, Protagoras, Statesman and Critias”, p.1535, e-artnow
  • The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.

  • One man cannot practice many arts with success.

    Plato (1942). “Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic”
  • And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously.

  • If you think your child's academic studies are more important than the arts, think again.

  • There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric... But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art - he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.

    Source: www.goodreads.com
  • That's what education should be," I said, "the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.

  • Art has no end but its own perfection.

    Plato (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Plato (Illustrated)”, p.6231, Delphi Classics
  • Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.

    Plato (2017). “Plato: The Complete Works including 31 Books (illustrated)”, p.433, Plato
  • Vision, in my view, is the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the Universe would ever have been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heavens. But as it is, the vision of day and night and of months and circling years has created the art of number and has given us not only the notion of Time but also means of research into the nature of the Universe. From these we have procured Philosophy in all its range, than which no greater boon ever has come or will come, by divine bestowal, unto the race of mortals.

  • Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings... the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art... So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense... madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.

  • Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.

  • . . . the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

    Plato, Catholic Way Publishing (2015). “The Plato Collection [47 Books]”, p.2181, Catholic Way Publishing
  • Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.

    Plato (2008). “Laws”, p.197, Cosimo, Inc.
  • God is a geometrician.

    Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”
  • The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful

    Plato (1925). “Plato”, Loeb Classical Library
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    Plato

    • Born: 428 BC
    • Died: 348 BC
    • Occupation: Philosopher