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 be curious about that which is not one’s concern while still in ignorance of oneself is ridiculous.
—Plato
Topics: Curiosity
When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself.
—Plato
Topics: Wine
Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.
—Plato
The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
—Plato
Topics: Learning
In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master’s name.
—Plato
Topics: Poverty, The Poor
No human thing is of serious importance.
—Plato
Topics: Worry
At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
—Plato
Topics: Love, Romance, One liners
The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself.
—Plato
Topics: Wisdom
The seen is the changing, the unseen is the unchanging.
—Plato
What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colors which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose
—Plato
Topics: Appearance
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
—Plato
Topics: Discipline
Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
—Plato
Topics: Love
Philosophy is the highest music
—Plato
Topics: Philosophy
All knowledge that is divorced from justice must be called cunning.
—Plato
Topics: Knowledge
Love is a serious mental disease.
—Plato
Topics: Feelings, Love
The greatest penalty of evildoing – namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.
—Plato
They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.
—Plato
Topics: Peculiarity, Science, Oddity, Medicine
The orderly and wise soul follows its guide and understands its circumstances.
—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
You cannot conceive the many without the one.
—Plato
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
—Plato
From a short-sided view, the whole moving contents of the heavens seemed to them a parcel of stones, earth and other soul-less bodies, though they furnish the sources of the world order.
—Plato
Topics: Space
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
Man is a two-legged animal without feathers.
—Plato
Topics: Humanity, Humankind
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
—Plato
Topics: Knowledge
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
—Plato
Topics: Apathy
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.
—Plato
Topics: Science
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.
—Plato
Topics: Excess
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.
—Plato
Topics: Happiness, Age, Aging
Whoever is detected in a shameful fraud is ever after not believed even if they speak the truth.
—Plato
Topics: Lying, Lies, Deception/Lying
Necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
—Plato
Topics: Motivation
Man is a being in search of meaning.
—Plato
Topics: Meaning, Humankind, Man, Humanity
The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
—Plato
Topics: Education, Part of The Whole
Slavery is a system of the most complete injustice.
—Plato
Topics: Slavery
Since the land is the parent, let the citizens take care of her more carefully than children do their mother.
—Plato
Topics: Wilderness
Excellent things are rare.
—Plato
Topics: Excellence
Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.
—Plato
Topics: Thought, Thinking, Thoughts
As it is not proper to cure the eyes without the head, nor the head without the body, so neither is it proper to cure the body without the soul.
—Plato
Topics: Soul
Truth is its own reward.
—Plato
Topics: Truth
Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.
—Plato
Topics: Evil
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