Quotes from Plato

The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.

Mankind will never see an end of trouble until... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power... become lovers of wisdom.

Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry.

The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.

Oligarchy: A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.

Behold! human beings living in an underground den…. Like ourselves… they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.

There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, a third which imitates them.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

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

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another… Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

In the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he salutes everyone whom he meets.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

...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...

The soul takes nothing with her to the other world but her education and culture; and these, it is said, are of the greatest service or of the greatest injury to the dead man, at the very beginning of his journey thither.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident they came by work.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.

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

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.