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

He best keeps from anger who remembers that God is always looking upon him.
—Plato
Topics: Anger

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.
—Plato
Topics: Wisdom

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

Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserved.
—Plato
Topics: Trifles

Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life.
—Plato
Topics: Education

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as irst it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
—Plato
Topics: Justice

The orderly and wise soul follows its guide and understands its circumstances.
—Plato

Love is a serious mental disease.
—Plato
Topics: Feelings, Love

Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.
—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

Refrain from covetousness, and thy estate shall prosper.
—Plato

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

To be is to do.
—Plato
Topics: Secrets of Success, Doing

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
—Plato
Topics: Growth, Truth, Earth, Life, Conflict, Courage, Power

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
—Plato
Topics: Discovery

Courage is knowing what not to fear.
—Plato
Topics: Fear, Bravery, Courage

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: Disorder, Democracy

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

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.
—Plato
Topics: Heroism, Heroes

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.
—Plato
Topics: Unity

To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.
—Plato
Topics: Lying, Lies, Deception/Lying

These, then, will be some of the features of democracy… it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.
—Plato
Topics: Democracy

Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
—Plato
Topics: Dying, Nature, Death

Excellent things are rare.
—Plato
Topics: Excellence

Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.
—Plato
Topics: Slander, Insults

Books are immortal sons deifying their sires.
—Plato
Topics: Books

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.
—Plato
Topics: Character, Criticism

Since the land is the parent, let the citizens take care of her more carefully than children do their mother.
—Plato
Topics: Wilderness

Man is a being in search of meaning.
—Plato
Topics: Humanity, Meaning, Man, Humankind

The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself.
—Plato
Topics: Wisdom

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