The famous ancient philosopher- Plato was of Greek origin belonging to the Classical period in Athens. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy which is known to be the first institution of higher education in the West. He is indisputably a figure of distinguished importance and influence in the world of philosophy and all philosophical discourses. The most rudimentary distinction in Platonic philosophy is between those observable objects that appear to be beautiful such as good, just, unified and the one object that beauty truly is such as goodness, justice, unity, from which those many beautiful things receive their names and characteristics. He was very conscious about how philosophy should be conceived.
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QUOTES OF PLATO
- “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
- “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.”
- “Thinking – the talking of the soul with itself.”
- “There is no harm in repeating a good thing.”
- “Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.”
- “Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.”
- “The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.”
- “Wealth, and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.”
- “An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.”
- “Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.”
- “If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.”
- “Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.”
- “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
- “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
- “And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.”
- “Character is simply, habit long continued.”
- “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
- “Books are immortal sons defying their sires.”
- “He was a wise man who invented God.”
- “How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?”
- “Every heart sings a song, incomplete until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
- “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
- “Human behaviour flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.”
- “good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”
- “No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.”
- “Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.”
- “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
- “The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.”
- “If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”
- “There is truth in wine and children.”
- “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”
- “Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act ‘rightly’ because we are ‘excellent’, in fact, we achieve ‘excellence’ by acting ‘rightly.’”
- “Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.”
- “Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”
- “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
- “There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”
- “To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.”
- “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
- “The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings.”
- “Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”
- “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.”
- “Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”
- “The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.”
- “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
- “Nothing beautiful without struggle.”
- “Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?”
- “…if a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.”
- “Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.”
- “No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself”
- “The 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, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.”
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Also Read:
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- 30 Zeno Quotes That You Must Read!
- 40 Best Immanuel Kant Quotes
- Letting Go Quotes – To Create A Healthy Life.
- Philosophy of Stoicism
- 4 Cardinal Virtues
Damayanti Dubey is a final year English major at Loreto College, Kolkata. She is a writer by passion and loves to indulge in languages, especially English, Bengali, and Urdu. She aims at exploring all of their intricacies and nuances. Damayanti is a disciple of Padma Bhushan Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty and is a national scholar of Indian classical music. She has always believed that a sound mind, free from the clutches of regressive and negative thoughts is the key to living a healthy life and makes efforts to promote mental wellness through the power of her words.
Damayanti believes in thinking beyond boundaries.