Plato Quotes

the most important thing is not life, but the good life.

How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself

Of these not right forms of government*… monarchy, when bound by good written rules, which we call laws, is the best of all the six; but without law it is hard and most oppressive to live with. The government of the few must be considered intermediate, both in good and in evil. The government of the multitude is weak in all respects and able to do nothing great, either good or bad, when compared with the other forms of government…; therefore of all these governments when they are lawful, this is the worst, and when they are all lawless it is the best.

He whom loves touches not walks in darkness.

According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.

The first and best victory is to conquer self

By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have described grew and increased among them; but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power.

I am smart because I know I nothing.

The best is to do injustice without paying the penalty; the worst is to suffer it without being able to take revenge. Justice is a mean between these two extremes. People value it not because it is a good but because they are too weak to do injustice with impunity.

He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse

We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it.

Whenever someone, on seeing something, realizes that that which he now sees wants to be like some other reality but falls short and cannot be like that other since it is inferior, do we agree that one who thinks this must have prior knowledge of that to which he says it is like, but deficiently so?

Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.