Plato Quotes About Youth

We have collected for you the TOP of Plato's best quotes about Youth! Here are collected all the quotes about Youth 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 14 sayings of Plato about Youth. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen.

    Plato (1921). “Theaetetus, Sophist”
  • Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.

  • Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.

    Plato (1872). “Laws. Appendix: Lesser Hippias. First Alcibiades. Menexenus. Index of persons and places”, p.189
  • The well-nurtured youth is one who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he became a man of gentle heart.

  • For he who would proceed aright... should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms... out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another, and that beauty in every form is one and the same.

    Plato (2013). “Dialogues of Plato”, p.316, Simon and Schuster
  • The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.

  • By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name.

  • Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting.

    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.902, e-artnow
  • And when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment.

    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.909, e-artnow (Open Publishing)
  • Shall we not, then, lay down a law, in the first place, that boys shall abstain altogether from wine till their eighteenth year, thereby teaching that it is wrong to add fire to fire, as through a funnel, pouring it into their body and soul before they proceed to the labor of life, thus exercising a caution as to the maddening habits of youth.

  • For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them

    Plato, Francis Macdonald Cornford, Alfred Edward Taylor (1985). “The banquet (also known as The symposium)”
  • Rhythm and melody enter into the soul of the well-instructed youth and produce there a certain mental harmony hardly obtainable in any other way. . . . thus music, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm.

  • O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the gods, know that if you become worse, you shall go to worse souls, or if better to the better... In every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven.

    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.2808, e-artnow
  • The true lover of learning then must his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth.... He whose desires are drawn toward knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasures I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one ... Then how can he who has the magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all times and all existence, think much of human life He cannot. Or can such a one account death fearful No indeed.

Page 1 of 1
Did you find Plato's interesting saying about Youth? We will be glad if you share the quote with your friends on social networks! This page contains Philosopher quotes from Philosopher Plato about Youth collected since 428 BC! Come back to us again – we are constantly replenishing our collection of quotes so that you can always find inspiration by reading a quote from one or another author!

Plato

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