Plato Quotes About Education, Freedom, Life, Love, Politics, Truth, Democracy, The Soul, Courage, Happiness, Wisdom, & Human Nature! The ancient Greek philosopher Plato had a significant impact on the formation of Western thought. Aristocratic and wealthy Athenians from the fifth century BC Plato was born. His birth year and location are likewise a mystery.
In his youth, Plato met Socrates, a friend of his uncle. It was fascinating to Plato how Socrates talked and debated. After that, he became close to the older scholar and was part of his group of close friends. However, the execution of Socrates reversed his mind about entering politics, and he spent the next 12 years traveling around the Mediterranean Sea and learning under a variety of tutors. Plato’s writings from this era show that Socrates’ teachings deeply impacted him. As a result, he returned to Athens, where he founded the first structured school in Western civilization.
It quickly became a center of brilliance, with many well-known intellectuals, including Aristotle, connected with it. However, Plato is most known for his literary legacy. An ancient Socratic discussion, “The Republic,” is one of his most well-known writings. Plato lays forth his ideas on what constitutes a fair city-state and a reasonable individual in this work.
One of his best-known works is “Theory of Forms,” which he wrote in the last stages of his life. Plato posited in his book that the tangible world as we know it is a figment of our imagination. According to him, this ever-changing universe is only a “copy” or “image” of reality. It is commonly thought that Plato died in Athens about 348/347 BCE; however, this has not been proven. Nevertheless, alongside Socrates and Aristotle, Plato is often regarded as the father of Western philosophy and science.
Best Plato Quotes
1. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” – Plato
2. “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” – Plato
3. “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” – Plato
4. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” – Plato
5. “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” – Plato
6. “Love is a serious mental disease.” – Plato
7. “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” – Plato
8. “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” – Plato
9. “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation” – Plato
10. “We are twice armed if we fight with faith.” – Plato
11. “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” – Plato
12. “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
13. “The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.”― Plato
14. “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
15. “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” – Plato
16. “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
17. “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.” – Plato
18. “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” – Plato
19. “There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.” – Plato
20. “Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one another’s company? For if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two….”― Plato
21. “if you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange…they all consider death a great evil…and the brave among them face death, when they do, for fear of greater evils…therefore, it is fear and terror that make all men brave, except for philosophers. yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice…what of the moderate among them? is their experience not similar?…they master certain pleasures because they are mastered by others…i fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that they only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom.”― Plato
22. Never discourage anyone…who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. – Plato
23. Death is not the worst that can happen to men. – Plato
24. Desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none, or very slight ones. – Plato
25. If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things. – Plato
26. Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil. – Plato
27. Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil. – Plato
28. Man…is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures. – Plato
29. No human thing is of serious importance. – Plato
30. There is no such thing as a lover’s oath. – Plato
31. “Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye”
― Plato
32. Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself. – Plato
33. No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. – Plato
34. Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind. – Plato
35. Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men; for we might have lived dishonourably, but have preferred to die honourably rather than bring you and your children into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers and forefathers; – Plato
