The orators - and the despots - have the least power in their cities ... since they do nothing that they wish to do, practically speaking, though they do whatever they think to be best.
- Plato
Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside.
- Plato
Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.
- Plato
Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.
- Plato
God is not the author of all things, but of good only.
- Plato
The gods are not magicians who transform themselves; neither do they deceive mankind in any way.
- Plato
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
- Plato
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
- Plato
Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike.
- Plato
No human thing is of serious importance.
- Plato
You cannot conceive the many without the one.
- Plato
Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.
- Plato
You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
- Plato
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
- Plato
I shall assume that your silence gives consent
- Plato
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
- Plato
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.
- Plato
The greatest penalty of evildoing is to grow into the likeness of bad men.
- Plato
Poetry and philosophy are always hostile to each other.
- Plato
Democracy passes into despotism.
- Plato
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
- Plato
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.
- Plato
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity
- Plato
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
- Plato
All that is said by any of us can only be imitation and representation.
- Plato
Friends have all things in common.
- Plato
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
- Plato
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.'
- Plato
But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?
- Plato
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
- Plato
Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?
- Plato
