Inspiring Quotes by Plato - Page 2

"Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom"

"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader"

"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life"

"Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder"

"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way"

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

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

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

"Courage is knowing what not to fear"

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

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

"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"

"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"

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

"I would fain grow old learning many things"

"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"

"Courage is a kind of salvation"

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

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet"

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

"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"

"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"

"To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils"

"Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others"

"When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure"

"Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment"

"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter"

"Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences"

"Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good"

"Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do"

"It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other"

"We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue"

"The beginning is the most important part of the work"

"One man cannot practice many arts with success"

"He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden"

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind"

"There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good"

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation"

"The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles"

"Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety"

"Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class"

"Necessity... the mother of invention"

"Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways"

"Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails"

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