Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

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. Plato never makes himself a part of the dialogues in his works, nor does he claim that he heard any of the dialogues.

After the death of Socrates, Plato traveled to Egypt and Italy studied in Pythagoras and then remained as an advisor for the rulers of Syracuse. When he returned to Athens around the age of forty he started his own academy, where he tried to impart the Socratic style of teaching to his students. The Academy operated till 529 CE after which it was closed, thinking it was a threat to Christianity.

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

Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.
—Plato
Topics: Science, Philosophy

Wealth does not bring excellence, but that wealth comes from excellence.
—Plato
Topics: Excellence

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.
—Plato
Topics: Nation, Nations, Nationality, Nationalism

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher; and philosophy begins in wonder.
—Plato
Topics: Dreams

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

Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.
—Plato
Topics: Democracy, Disorder

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.
—Plato
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness

Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.
—Plato

A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways – by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.
—Plato
Topics: Light

No human thing is of serious importance.
—Plato
Topics: Worry

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

Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.
—Plato
Topics: Art, Poetry

For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a fortune value their money, not merely for its uses, like other persons, but because it is their own production. This makes them moreover disagreeable companions, because they will praise nothing but riches.
—Plato
Topics: Riches, Wealth

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.
—Plato
Topics: Concentration, Focus

Wine fills the heart with courage.
—Plato
Topics: Wine, One liners

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
—Plato
Topics: Education

If I were sure God would pardon me, and men would not know my sin, yet I should be ashamed to sin, because of its essential baseness.
—Plato
Topics: Sin

Philosophy is the highest music
—Plato
Topics: Philosophy

Excellent things are rare.
—Plato
Topics: Excellence

Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding.
—Plato
Topics: Atheism

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

There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who when danger is pressing in will not acknowledge the divine power.
—Plato
Topics: Atheism

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

If a man be endowed with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility.
—Plato
Topics: Criticism, Mind

There can be no affinity nearer than our country.
—Plato
Topics: Patriotism

The mind ought sometimes to be diverted, that it may return the better to thinking.
—Plato
Topics: Pleasure, Mind

Every unjust man is unjust against his will
—Plato
Topics: One liners

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
—Plato

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill… we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.
—Plato
Topics: Politicians, Politics

Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.
—Plato
Topics: City Life, Cities

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