Quotes About Plato

In fact, by founding the Academy in the year 387 BC, Plato was envisaging a practical pattern of life in retreat that he had encountered shortly before on his first Sicilian journey. Near the city of Kroton (now called Crotone) in southern Italy, he had come upon a commune of hermits doing theory who were followers of the savant Pythagoras, a man of whom it was not known whether he was still a shaman or had already become a mathematician or was both at once.

In practice, Plato transposed the retreat from the city back into the city again and, in doing so, established a political-topological difference that would have a major effect on world history. To borrow Michel Foucault's term, the settlement of the Academy in the city was an issue of a "heterotopia

Not until Plato's Republic was a type of politician created who would no longer serve as a loudspeaker, but rather as a receiver of quiet ideas – with little success, as we know, as the introduction of the quiet politician is yet to come. It would be a contradiction in terms, for politics, as the art of what is possible in noise, remains assigned to the loud side of the phonotope

Philosophy, as Plato endowed it to posterity, is a child of defeat that simultaneously compensates for this defeat by ingeniously attacking it as the best form of defense.

In Plato and in many Greek tragedies we learn that the Athenians did not seem to believe in rewards and punishments after death. 'In fact, they do not seem to have expected very much at all. "After death every man is earth and shadow: nothing goes to nothing".' (This is a character in one of Euripides' plays.) In Plato's Phaedo, Simmias betrays his worry that at his death his soul will be scattered 'and this is their end'.52

Plato to Descartes to Dawkins to Rhanda. Souls and zombie agents and qualia. Kolmogorov complexity. Consciousness as Divine Spark. Consciousness as electromagnetic field. Consciousness as functional cluster.

Plato talks about something called anamnesis, which is when something long forgotten comes to the surface of a man's consciousness. Now, I'll admit that just sounds like a fancy word for remembering something, but actually it's more than that because with remembering, it's not necessary to have forgotten anything, which makes for a subtle distinction. That's what cinema does.

Plato laments the decline of the oral tradition and the atrophy of memory which writing induces, I at the other end of the Age of the Written Word am impressed by the sturdiness and reliability of words on paper... The will to record indelibly, to set down stories in permanent words, seems to me akin to the conviction that we are larger than our biologies.

El ejercicio de las letras es misterioso; lo que opinamos es efímero y opto por la tesis platónica de la Musa y no por la de Poe, que razonó, o fingió razonar, que la escritura de un poema es una operación de la inteligencia.

He had recorded in canto 8 how Plato the Idealist 'went to Dionysius of Syracuse | Because he had observed that tyrants | Were most efficient in all that they set their hands to'; but had he taken the point of the story, that Plato found 'he was unable to persuade Dionysius to any amelioration'?

What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colors which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose

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

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.

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

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.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

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

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.

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

As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have least with are the greatest babblers.

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten imparting grace.

Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.

Love is a serious mental disease.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.