Plato was an Athenian philosopher. He is the founder of the Platonist school of thought and the Academy. Here we have shared Plato quotes on love, life, truth, success, politics, democracy, justice, education, self, knowledge, inspirational, and motivational.
Plato was born on 428/427 or 424/423 BC in Athens, Greece, and died on 348/347 BC (age c. 80) in Athens, Greece.
Best Plato quotes
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods. – Plato
This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are. – Plato
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. – Plato
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. – Plato
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die. – Plato
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. – Plato
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant. – Plato
Democracy passes into despotism. – Plato
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers. – Plato
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. – Plato
It is right to give every man his due. – Plato
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life. – Plato
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. – Plato
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those, we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands. – Plato
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. – Plato
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. – Plato
Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land is good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation. – Plato
Death is not the worst that can happen to men. – Plato
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself. – Plato
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. – Plato
There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. – Plato
The opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance. – Plato
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. – Plato
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another. – Plato
Life must be lived as play. – Plato
Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike. – Plato
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories. – Plato
There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain. – Plato
To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way. – Plato
Man – a being in search of meaning. – Plato
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty. – Plato
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. – Plato
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety. – Plato
The measure of a man is what he does with power. – Plato
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. – Plato
We are twice armed if we fight with faith. – Plato
Courage is knowing what not to fear. – Plato
Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns. – Plato
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. – Plato
If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life. – Plato
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse men. – Plato
Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. – Plato
Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom. – Plato
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. – Plato
Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself. – Plato
Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens. – Plato
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. – Plato
He who is not a good servant will not be a good master. – Plato
To be sure I must, and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent. – Plato
Science is nothing but perception. – Plato
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. – Plato
The beginning is the most important part of the work. – Plato
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. – Plato
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. – Plato
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile. – Plato
The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort. – Plato
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state? – Plato
When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure. – Plato
We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise. – Plato
The good is beautiful. – Plato
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence. – Plato
To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed. – Plato
For good nurture and education implant good constitutions. – Plato
To go to the world below, having a soul that is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils. – Plato
The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not. – Plato
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 by ill bringing-up, are far more fatal. – Plato
One man cannot practice many arts with success. – Plato
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. – Plato
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails. – Plato
They certainly give very strange names to diseases. – Plato
The gods’ service is tolerable, man’s intolerable.– Plato
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. – Plato
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. – Plato
The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine. – Plato
States are as the men, they grow out of human characters. – Plato
The wisest have the most authority. – Plato
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand. – Plato
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. – Plato
Courage is a kind of salvation. – Plato
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. – Plato
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. – Plato
Philosophy begins in wonder. – Plato
There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good. – Plato
The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless. – Plato
The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state. – Plato
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty. – Plato
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 are accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune. – Plato
No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. – Plato
No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern. – Plato
No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return. – Plato
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death? – Plato
Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice. – Plato
Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do. – Plato
Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half. – Plato
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. – Plato
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another. – Plato
Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety. – Plato
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it. – Plato
I would fain grow old learning many things. – Plato
It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn. – Plato
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals. – Plato
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue. – Plato
The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles. – Plato
A man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways. – Plato
Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly. – Plato
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory. – Plato
Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy. – Plato
Cunning… is but the low mimic of wisdom. – Plato
The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so. – Plato
Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences. – Plato
The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction. – Plato
Then not only custom but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice and that justice is equality. – Plato
Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man. – Plato
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole and not that of anyone’s class. – Plato
A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. – Plato
As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser. – Plato
There is no harm in repeating a good thing. – Plato
The god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it’s almost impossible to stamp out. – Plato
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly. – Plato
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work. – Plato
Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment. – Plato
Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. – Plato
Philosophy is the highest music.– Plato
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education. – Plato
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. – Plato
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter. – Plato
We do not learn, and what we call learning is only a process of recollection. – Plato
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. – Plato
Then not only an old man but also a drunkard becomes a second time a child. – Plato
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. – Plato
There is no such thing as a lovers’ oath. – Plato
He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power. – Plato
Excess generally causes a reaction and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments. – Plato
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. – Plato
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. – Plato
I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict. – Plato
Necessity… the mother of invention. – Plato
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul. – Plato
Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good. – Plato
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