Plato Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Plato's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Philosopher Plato's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 942 quotes on this page collected since 428 BC! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

  • Mathematics is the language in which the gods talk to people.

  • Justice is having and doing what is one's own.

  • Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.

  • The wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.

    Plato (2009). “Selected Dialogues of Plato: The Benjamin Jowett Translation”, p.290, Modern Library
  • If in a discussion of many matters ... we are not able to give perfectly exact and self-consistent accounts, do not be surprised: rather we would be content if we provide accounts that are second to none in probability.

  • But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

  • Nothing in human affairs is worth any great anxiety.

  • When you swear, swear seriously and solemnly, but at the same time with a smile, for a smile is the twin sister of seriousness.

  • For when there are no words, it is very difficult to recognize the meaning of the harmony and rhythm, or to see any worldly object is imitated by them.

  • For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.

    Plato (2015). “The Complete Plato”, p.175, Booklassic
  • 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.

  • All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

    Plato (1866). “The Republic of Plato, tr. with an analysis and notes, by J.L. Davies and D.J. Vaughan”, p.55
  • What the expression is intended to mean, I think, is that there is a better and a worse element in the character of each individual, and that when the naturally better element controls the worse then the man is said to be "master of himself", as a term of praise. But when - as a result of bad upbringing or bad company one s better element is overpowered by the numerical superiority of one s worse impulses, then one is criticized for not being master of oneself and for lack of self control.

  • He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act

  • There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen.

    Plato (1977). “The Portable Plato”, p.256, Penguin
  • The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful.

    Plato, Thomas Taylor, Floyer Sydenham (1984). “The Works of Plato”, Facsimiles-Garl
  • ...the Gods too love a joke.

    Plato, Aeterna Press (2015). “Cratylus”, p.100, Aeterna Press
  • From all wild beasts, a child is the most difficult to handle.

  • There is truth in wine and children

    Plato (1989). “Symposium”, p.69, Hackett Publishing
  • 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.
  • Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.

  • In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful -in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason -and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes.

  • You can't do good if you don't feel good.

  • Those who have knowledge are more confident than those who have no knowledge, and they are more confident after they have learned than before.

    Plato (1977). “The Portable Plato”, p.67, Penguin
  • Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

    Plato (1871). “The Dialogues of Plato”, p.249
  • Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

  • The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage.

    Plato, Justin Kaplan (1951). “Dialogues of Plato”, p.240, Simon and Schuster
  • No man's nature is able to know what is best for the social state of man; or, knowing, always able to do what is best.

    Plato (1872). “Laws. Appendix: Lesser Hippias. First Alcibiades. Menexenus. Index of persons and places”, p.388
  • Then may we not fairly plead in reply that our true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things with the mental faculty fitted to do so, that is, with the faculty which is akin to reality, and which approaches and unites with it, and begets intelligence and truth as children, and is only released from travail when it has thus reached knowledge and true life and satisfaction?

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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 942 quotes from the Philosopher Plato, starting from 428 BC! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!

    Plato

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