Quotes from Plato

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

How, then, might we contrive… one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?

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.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

We who of old left the booming surge of the Aegean lie here in the mid-plain of Ecbatana: farewell, renowned Eretria once our country; farewell, Athens nigh to Euboea; farewell, dear sea.

Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labor, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

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.

Let there be one man who has a city obedient to his will, and he might bring into existence the ideal polity about which the world is so incredulous.

The good is the beautiful.

The absolute natures or kinds are known severally by the absolute idea of knowledge.

You cannot conceive the many without the one.

Life must be lived as play.

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.

To be curious about that which is not one's concern while still in ignorance of oneself is absurd.

And this which you deem of no moment is the very highest of all: that is whether you have a right idea of the gods, whereby you may live your life well or ill.

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.

If a man, fixing his attention on these and the like difficulties, does away with ideas of things and will not admit that every individual thing has its own determinate idea which is always one and the same, he will have nothing on which his mind can rest; and so he will utterly destroy the power of reasoning.

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.

No physician, insofar as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere moneymaker.

A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbour.*

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.

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.