Plato

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”

“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.”

“Love - a grave mental disease.”

“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”

“…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.”

“Ideas are the source of all things”

“We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.”

“Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.”

“The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines.”

“Courage is a kind of salvation.”

“All learning has an emotional base.”

“Necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”

“The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”

“Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.”

“The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.”

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”

“States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.”

“....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)”

“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.”

“Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].”

“He was a wise man who invented God.”

“Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.”

“To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.”

“No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.”

“Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.”

“To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.”

“They certainly give very strange names to diseases.”

“The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.”

“Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.”

“All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.”

“Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.”

“The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.”

“Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.”

“Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.”

“Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.”

“Knowledge is the food of the soul.”

“Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.”

“For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.”

“A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.”

“The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.”

“There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.”

“The greatest wealth is to live content with little.”

“People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.”

“Then we shan’t regard anyone as a lover of knowledge or wisdom who is fussy about what he studies…”

“To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.”

“Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.”

“The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.”

“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life”

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

“I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.”

“It is right to give every man his due.”

“If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.”

“No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.”

“All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.”

“When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.”

“I would fain grow old learning many things.”

“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”

“I shouldn’t like to take my oath on the whole story, but one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act—that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know than if we believe there is no point in looking because wha...”

“He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.”

“For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.”

“Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.”

“Democracy passes into despotism.”

“There is no harm in repeating a good thing.”

“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.”

“No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”

“The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.”

“When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”