Plato Quotes

“Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”

“No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.”

“If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.”

“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.”

“Good nurture and education implant good constitutions.”

“Let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find out the natural bent.”

“Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”

“Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number.”

“Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”

“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.”

“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.”

“Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.”

“What is honoured in a country will be cultivated there.”

“Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.”

“There are three classes of men: lovers of wisdom, lovers of honour, and lovers of gain.”

“Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”

“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.”

“Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.”

“Our need will be the real creator.”

“Silence gives consent.”