Plato

“But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.”

“States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers.”

“Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.”

“Those who don't know must learn from those who do.”

“those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight.”

“Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.”

“For he, Adeimantus, whose mind is fixed upon true being, has surely no time to look down upon the affairs of earth, or to be filled with malice and envy, contending against men”

“the useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base”

“Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.”

“There will be no end to the troubles of the state or indeed of humanity until philosophers become kings or until those we now call kings really and truly become philosophers.”

“Philosophy begins in wonder." -Plato”

“It is impossible to improve the world if first the man does not improve”

“Good actions can strengthen ourselves and inspire good actions to others.”

“A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it. Whoever therefore claims to be zealous of truth, of happiness, of wisdom or knowledge, must become a lover of books.”

“Self conquest is the greatest of victories.”

“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.”

“Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.”

“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.”

“He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act”

“Stranger: 'Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?Theatetus: Quite true.Stranger: But the stream of thought which flows through the lips and is audible is called speech?Theatetus: True.Stranger: And we know that there exists in speech...Theatetus: What exists?Stranger: AffirmationTheatetus: Yes, we know it.”

“The rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know.”

“Then Prometheus, in his perplexity as to what preservation he could devise, stole from Hephaestus and Athena wisdom in the arts together with fire -- since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully used by any -- and he handed it there and then as a gift to man.”

“We can easily forget a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

“değeri olan bir kimse yaşayacak mıyım yoksa ölecek miyim diye düşünmemelidir. bir iş görürken yalnızca doğru mu eğri mi, yürekli bir insan gibi mi yoksa tabansızca mı davrandığını düşünmelidir.”

“Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from dakness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. (Included in the introduction to "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes)”

“I must go beyond the dark world of sense information to the clear brilliance of the sunlight of the outside world. Once done, it becomes my duty to go back to the cave in order to illuminate the minds of those imprisoned in the 'darkness' of sensory knowledge.”

“Even now I'm well aware that if I allowed myself to listen to him I couldn't resist but would have the same experience again. He makes me admit that, in spite of my great defects, I neglect myself and instead get involved in Athenian politics. So I force myself to block my ears and go away, like someone escaping from the Sirens, to prevent myself sitting there beside him till I grow old.”

“Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”

“And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.”

“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.”

“Star of my life, to the stars your face is turned;Would I were the heavens, looking back at you with ten thousand eyes.”

“To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils”

“Pleasure is the bait of sin”

“Habit is not unimportant.”

“Rather I think that a man who ... is willing ... to value learning as long as he lives, not supposing that old age brings him wisdom of itself, will necessarily pay more attention to the rest of his life.”

“Plato asked Socrates what is love...Socrates: Go into the field and get me the most special leaf...Plato returned with no leaf at handsaid: I found the most beautiful leaf in the field but I didn't pick it up for I might find a better one, but when I returned to the place, it was gone... Socrates: We always look for the best in life. When we finally see it, we take it for granted and expecting a better one... NOT KNOWING IT WAS THE BEST AND LAST!!!”

“The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.”

“... when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won't laugh mindlessly, but he'll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brillance.”

“pedagogical”

“Plato is widely believed to have been a student of Socrates and to have been deeply influenced by his teacher's unjust death. Plato's brilliance as a writer and thinker can be witnessed by reading his Socratic dialogues. Some of the dialogues, letters, and other works that are ascribed to him are considered spurious”

“spurious”

“You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You'd think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse rolls about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn't know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father's support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support. [275d-e]”

“Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.”

“Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise even although I am not wise when they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I am speaking now only to those of you who have condemned me to death. And I have another thing to say to them: You think that I was convicted through deficiency of words - I mean, that if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone, nothing unsaid, I might have gained an acquittal. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words - certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of the manner of my defence, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death, and they, too, go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my award - let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated, - and I think that they are well.”

“When I kiss Agathon my soul is on my lips, where it comes, poor thing, hoping to cross over.”

“... because it is correct to make a priority of young people, taking care that they turn out as well as possible...”

“But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?”

“For as there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.”

“The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.”

“Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.”