Plato Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. ...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment... The Symposium

2. …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. The Republic and Other Works

3. ...when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he. The Symposium

4. [Dialogue between Solon and an Egyptian Priest]In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the river Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of Sais [...] To this city came Solon, and was received there with great honour; he asked the priests who were most skilful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them on to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in our part of the world-about Phoroneus, who is called "the first man," and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the events of which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. Timaeus and Critias

5. 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.

6. For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy. Theaetetus

7. For, let me tell you that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me are the pleasure and charm of conversation. Republic: Books 1-5

8. I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have. Apology

9. Ideas are the source of all things

10. 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. The Symposium

11. No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

12. O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him. Phaedrus

13. Only the dead have seen the end of war.

14. Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?

15. The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends 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.

16. Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools, because they have to say something.

17. You should not honor men more than truth.

18. You're my Star, a stargazer too,and I wish that I were Heaven,with a billion eyes to look at you!

19. ....I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best.(tr Jowett) Phaedo

20. A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.

21. A rhetorician is capable of speaking effectively against all comers, whatever the issue, and can consequently be more persuasive in front of crowds about… anything he likes. Gorgias

22. And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation. The Republic

23. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. The Republic

24. but if you wish to get better training, you must do something more than that; you must consider not only what happens if a particular hypothesis is true, but also what happens if it is not true. 135e-136a Parmenides

25. Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.

26. 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.

27. Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know. The Republic

28. False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

29. How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? The Allegory of the Cave

30. 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.