Plato (c.429–c.347 BCE) was a Greek philosopher. A pupil of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, Plato founded the Academy, one of antiquity’s great philosophical schools. Plato is the most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers. His beliefs had an enormous impact on the development of Western philosophy.
Born an Athenian nobleman, Plato rejected social privilege to devote his life to philosophy. According to legend, when Plato was just twenty, he was on his way to a theater festival to present his manuscript for a tragedy. By chance, he heard Socrates speak. Plato was so stirred that he burned his manuscript at once, and decided to follow Socrates. The Pythagoreans also influenced Plato, as did the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides.
Plato established the dialogue as a vehicle of philosophical thought. With Socrates as the principal speaker, Plato wrote about topics as varied as love, government, politics, ethics, friendship, metaphysics, law, and cosmology. Plato’s works are the reason we know much about Socrates; Plato’s dialogues characterize Socrates as a shrewd and versatile interrogator.
All of Plato’s 36 works endure. His most famous dialogues include Gorgias (on rhetoric as an art of flattery,) Phaedo (on death and the immortality of the soul,) and the Symposium (a discussion on the nature of love.)
Plato’s most significant work was the Republic, a protracted discussion on justice. In it, he proposed his ideal political system based on the division of the population into three classes—rulers, police and armed forces, and civilians—determined not by birth or affluence but by education.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Plato
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.
—Plato
Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.
—Plato
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
—Plato
Topics: Honesty
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
—Plato
Topics: Love
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
That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen.
—Plato
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
—Plato
Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.
—Plato
The orderly and wise soul follows its guide and understands its circumstances.
—Plato
Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.
—Plato
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.
—Plato
Topics: Confidence, Happiness, Self-reliance
The life that is unexamined is not worth living.
—Plato
The greatest penalty of evildoing – namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.
—Plato
The ideal society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers.
—Plato
Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
—Plato
Topics: Deception/Lying, Deception
Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
—Plato
By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name.
—Plato
Topics: Excellence
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
—Plato
Topics: Anxiety, Worry
You cannot conceive the many without the one.
—Plato
The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
—Plato
Topics: Politics
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
—Plato
Death is not the worst than can happen to men.
—Plato
He whom love touches not walks in darkness.
—Plato
The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.
—Plato
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
—Plato
Topics: Teaching, Education
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
—Plato
Topics: Discovery
Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician’s interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?
—Plato
Topics: Medicine
Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.
—Plato
Slavery is a system of the most complete injustice.
—Plato
Topics: Slavery
Man is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill-educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.
—Plato
Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.
—Plato
Topics: Health, One liners
Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.
—Plato
The greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind; yet the mind and the body are one and should not be treated separately!
—Plato
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Aristotle Ancient Greek Philosopher
Xenocrates Greek Philosopher, Scientist
Heraclitus Ancient Greek Philosopher
Epicurus Greek Philosopher
Epictetus Ancient Greek Philosopher
Plotinus Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mystic
Bias of Priene Greek Orator
Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
Socrates Ancient Greek Philosopher
Pythagoras Greek Philosopher