Plato Quotes About Madness

We have collected for you the TOP of Plato's best quotes about Madness! Here are collected all the quotes about Madness 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 11 sayings of Plato about Madness. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.

    Plato, C. D. C. Reeve (2012). “A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues”, p.231, Hackett Publishing
  • 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.

  • Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift.

  • Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.

    Plato, Alexander Nehamas, Paul Woodruff (1995). “Phaedrus”, p.25, Hackett Publishing
  • 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.

  • 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
  • Madness is a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.

    Plato (2016). “The Complete Works of Plato (Unabridged): 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.1540, e-artnow (Open Publishing)
  • Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large.

  • For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.

    Plato (1963). “The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including The Letters”, Bollingen
  • 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.

  • Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.

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Plato

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