Top 15 Plato Quotes

4th-century BCE Greek philosopher

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Plato (Πλάτων Plátōn; c. 427 BC – c. 347 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, founder of the Platonist school of thought and the Academy (Akademia), the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

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Native Name: Πλάτων

Alternative Names: Plátōn • Platon • Aristocles • Αριστοκλής • Ἀριστοκλῆς

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Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.

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.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

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 heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

Love is a serious mental disease.

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

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

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

Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.

I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts.

...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment...