Plato Quotes

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

[Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato…. He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato] said, "Aristotle has kicked us off, just as chickens do their mother after they have been hatched."

Those who tell the stories rule society.

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

not exact, but: the two most important questions are; who will teach the children? what they teach them?

I am smart because I know I nothing.

Love is the pursuit of the whole.

Pleasure is the bait of sin

It is difficult to set forth any of the greater ideas, except by the use of examples; for it would seem that each of us knows everything that he knows as if in a dream and then again, when he is as it were awake, knows nothing of it all.

One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Books are immortal sons defying their sires.

Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things. And when he had called them together, he spake as follows— [** The rest of the Dialogue of Critias has been lost]

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

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