Plato the Philosopher, biography, facts and quotes

"He who is not a good servant will not be a good master"

"A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers"

"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"

"Love is a serious mental disease"

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little"

"The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom"

"To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less"

"They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases"

"Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil"

"Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune"

"If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals"

"If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life"

"I would fain grow old learning many things"

"I shall assume that your silence gives consent"

"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work"

"I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning"

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws"

"Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others"

"For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions"

"For good nurture and education implant good constitutions"

"For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories"

"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery"

"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments"

"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"

"Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal"

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty"

"Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike"

"Democracy passes into despotism"

"Death is not the worst that can happen to men"

"Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom"

"Courage is knowing what not to fear"

"Courage is a kind of salvation"

"Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly"

"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance"

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet"

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another"

"As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser"

"Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation"

"Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another"

"And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul"

"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"

"All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue"

"All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince"

"A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants"

"They certainly give very strange names to diseases"

"There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself"

"The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men"

"The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so"

"The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery"

"The measure of a man is what he does with power"

Occup.	Philosopher
From	Greece
Born	427 BC Athens, Greece
Died	347 BC

Plato Biography

112 Famous quotes by Plato