Quotes from Plato

You ask a question, I said, to which a reply can only be given in a parable. Yes, Socrates; and that is a way of speaking to which you are not at all accustomed, I suppose.

Harmony and grace depend on simplicity… the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character.

For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed.

Examina si estas otras cosas no corrompen a los demás trabajadores hasta el punto de ocasionar su perversión. -¿Y cuáles son ellas? -La riqueza -contesté- y la indigencia.

Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others.

Deixa que te desprezem, te considerem insensato, te insultem, se quiserem, e até, por Zeus, sofre que te esbofeteiem, coisa que tu achas entre todas infamante: não te acontecerá nenhum mal se fores realmente um homem de bem, dedicado à prática da virtude.

And poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well?

cuando más, mejor y más fácil­mente se produce es cuando cada persona realiza un solo trabajo de acuerdo con sus aptitudes, en el momento oportuno y sin ocuparse de nada más que de él.

the Thirty sent for me" says Socrates ". . .and ordered [me] to bring Leon the Salaminian to be put to death. . .I, however, showed again, by action, not in word only, that I did not care a whit for death. . .but that I did care with all my might not to do anything unjust or unholy… For that government, with all its power, did not frighten me into doing anything unjust…I simply went home.

Itself, by itself, solely, one everlasting, and single.

Her zaman güzel öten kuÄŸular, ölümlerinin yaklaÅŸt???n? hissettiklerinde, belki de hizmetinde bulunduklar? tanr?n?n yan?na gideceklerine sevindiklerinden, daha çok ve daha güzel ötmeye baÅŸlarlar. Ama insanlar ölümden korktuklar? için kuÄŸulara iftira atarak, üzüntülerinden öttüklerini, yaklaÅŸan ölümleri için a??t yakt?klar?n? söylerler.

tanto con la riqueza como con la indigencia resultan peores los productos de las artes y peores también los que las practican.

The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a 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.

might is still right, but the might is the weakness of the many combined against the strength of the few.

The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; for there is a law of contraries; the excess of freedom passes into the excess of slavery, and the greater the freedom the greater the slavery.

What about someone who believes in beautiful things but doesn't believe in the beautiful itself and isn't able to follow anyone who could lead him to the knowledge of it? Don't you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state? Isn't this dreaming: whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?

And if so, my friend, I said, there is no special faculty of administration in a state which a woman has because she is a woman, or which a man has by virtue of his sex, but the gifts of nature are alike diffused in both; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a man. Very true. Then

Love sees no enemies…fear does.

Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length.

wise men talk because they have something to say fools talk because they have to say something

el alma no conserva ningún conocimiento que haya penetrado en ella por la fuerza.

There can be no reward so fitting as maintenance in the Prytaneum

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws - Plato

Knowledge, do you say it is power? yes most mighty of all powers.