Quotes by Plato

Wise men speak because they have something to say Fools because they have to say something.

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

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.

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.

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.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

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.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

For 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.

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 be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

We do not learn and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

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 with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.