One of the towering figures of ancient Greek philosophy, Plato was the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. A student of the great philosopher Socrates, Plato was also the teacher of another influential figure, Aristotle. These three philosophers are jointly credited to have laid the very foundations of Western philosophy and science. Plato was not just highly influential in the fields of Western science, philosophy, and mathematics, but is also said to have been one of the founders of Western religion and spirituality. In addition, he is also credited to have been the founder of Western political philosophy and one of the most influential authors in the history of philosophy. What would be a better way to imbibe some of his vast wisdom than by leisurely reading through his words of wisdom that we bring to you in form of quotes?
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.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Plato
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.
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
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
Plato
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?
There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.
Plato
…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.
Plato
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.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Plato
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.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato
Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.
Plato
χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά
Nothing beautiful without struggle.
