Plato: Trending quotes (page 3)

“It would be better for me … that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.”

Plato

Words spoken by Socrates, 482c
Gorgias

Men

“Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it becomes an error of the understanding.”

Plato

Misattributed to Plato in Laws by Conservapedia http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_Quotes. Actual source: William Fleming, as quoted in Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay by Samuel Austin Allibone, 1816–1889. http://www.bartleby.com/349/authors/74.html
Misattributed

Disease , Error , Soul , Understanding

“And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.”

Plato

211
The Symposium

Love , Beauty

“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”

Plato book Theaetetus

155, The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3, 1871, p. 377 http://books.google.com/books?id=4kQNAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA377
Theaetetus

Feeling

“It is impossible to conceive of many without one.”

Plato book Parmenides

166b
Parmenides

“But if with your mind's eye you regard the absolute great and these many great things in the same way, will not another great appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great?”

Plato book Parmenides

132a
Parmenides

Way , Appearance

“Meno: I feel, somehow, that I like what you are saying.
Socrates: And I, Meno, like what I am saying. Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; — that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.”

Plato book Meno

Meno

Feeling , Confidence , Thinking , Fight

“As you hope to prove your own great value to the state, and having proved it, to attain at once to absolute power, so do I indulge a hope that I shall be the supreme power over you, if I am able to prove my own great value to you.”

Plato

Socrates speaking to Alcibiades
Alcibiades I

Hope

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Plato The Republic

Commonly misattributed due to Benjamin Jowett's popular idiomatic translation (1871) of Plato's Republic, Book II, 369c as "The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention." Jowett's translation is noted for injecting flowery, if not florid, language familiar to his Victorian era audience. (See "Note on the Translation", by Elizabeth Watson Scharffenberger, ed., in Republic (2005), Spark Educational Publishing, ISBN 1593080972, p. liii http://books.google.com/books?id=9FLdTCiaI_MC&pg=PR53.) Jowett himself, in Plato's Republic: The Greek Text, Vol. III "Notes", 1894, p. 82, gives a literal translation of Plato as "our need will be the real creator," without the proverbial flourish. The Greek text is: ποιήσει δὲ αὐτήν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡ ἡμετέρα χρεία. Perseus.tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0167%3Abook%3D2%3Asection%3D369c
Misattributed

“[Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato…. He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato] said, "Aristotle has kicked us off, just as chickens do their mother after they have been hatched."”

Plato

’’The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers’’, Book V, "Life of Aristotle" http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlaristotle.htm paragraphs II and IV, as translated by C. D. Yonge
In Diogenes Laërtius

“Time then has come into being along with the universe, that being generated together, together they may be dissolved, should a dissolution of them ever come to pass; and it was made after the pattern of the eternal nature, that it might be as like to it as was possible. For the pattern is existent for all eternity; but the copy has been and is and shall be throughout all time continually. So then this was the plan and intent of God for the generation of time; the sun and the moon and five other stars which have the name of planets have been created for defining and preserving the numbers of time. …and a month is fulfilled when the moon, after completing her own orbit, overtakes the sun; a year, when the sun has completed his own course. But the courses of the others men have not taken into account, save a few out of many… they do not know that time arises from the wanderings of these, which are incalculable in multitude and marvellously intricate. None the less however can we observe that the perfect number of time fulfils the perfect year at the moment when the relative swiftnesses of all the eight revolutions accomplish their course together and reach their starting-point, being measured by the circle of the same and uniformly moving. In this way then and for these causes were created all such of the stars as wander through the heavens and turn about therein, in order that this universe may be most like to the perfect and ideal animal by its assimilation to the eternal being.”

Plato book Timaeus

38d–40a, as quoted by R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato https://books.google.com/books?id=q2YMAAAAIAAJ (1888)
Timaeus

Men , God , Way , Star

“And when the father who begat it perceived the created image of the eternal gods, that it had motion and life, he rejoiced and was well pleased; and he bethought him to make it yet more nearly like its pattern. Now whereas that is a living being eternally existent, even so he essayed to make this All the like to the best of his power. Now so it was that the nature of the ideal was eternal. But to bestow this attribute altogether upon a created thing was impossible; so he bethought him to make a moving image of eternity, and while he was ordering the universe he made of eternity that abides in unity an eternal image moving according to number, even that which we have named time. For whereas days and nights and months and years were not before the universe was created, he then devised the generation of them along with the fashioning of the universe. Now all these are portions of time, and was and shall be are forms of time that have come to be, although we wrongly ascribe them unawares to the eternal essence. For we say that it was and is and shall be, but in verity is alone belongs to it: and was and shall be it is meet should be applied only to Becoming which moves in time; for these are motions. But that which is ever changeless without motion must not become elder or younger in time, neither must it have become so in past nor be so in the future; nor has it to do with any attributes that Becoming attaches to the moving objects of sense: these have come into being as forms of time, which is the image of eternity and revolves according to number. Moreover we say that the become is the become, and the becoming is the becoming, and that which shall become is that which shall become, and not-being is not-being. In all this we speak incorrectly. But concerning these things the present were perchance not the right season to inquire particularly.”

Plato book Timaeus

38b, as quoted by R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato (1888)
Timaeus

Life , God , Fashion , Nature

“I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed … from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty.”

Plato

175d
The Symposium

Wisdom

“Your pride has been too much for the pride of your admirers; they were numerous and high-spirited, but they have all run away, overpowered by your superior force of character; not one of them remains. And I want you to understand the reason why you have been too much for them. You think that you have no need of them or of any other man, for you have great possessions and lack nothing, beginning with the body, and ending with the soul.”

Plato

Socrates speaking to Alcibiades
Alcibiades I

Soul , Understanding , Thinking

“Friends have all things in common.”

Plato book Phaedrus

279
Phaedrus

“As a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one.”

Plato book Phaedrus

255c
Phaedrus

Beauty , Soul

“It would be a hard task to discover the maker and father of this universe of ours, and even if we did find him, it would be impossible to speak of him to everyone.”

Plato book Timaeus

Section 28c http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0180:text=Tim.:section=28c, Greek http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0179%3Atext%3DTim.%3Asection%3D28c as quoted in The Watchtower, 2015, 2/15, pp. 19–23 http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2015127
Timaeus

Universe

“Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong … And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.”

Plato

Gorgias

Law , Business

“Socrates: The shoemaker, for example, uses a square tool, and a circular tool, and other tools for cutting?
Alcibiades: Yes.
Socrates: But the tool is not the same as the cutter and user of the tool?
Alcibiades: Of course not. …
Socrates: Then what shall we say of the shoemaker? Does he cut with his tools only or with his hands?
Alcibiades: With his hands as well.
Socrates: He uses his hands too?
Alcibiades: Yes. …
Socrates: And does not a man use the whole body?
Alcibiades: Certainly.
Socrates: And that which uses is different from that which is used?
Alcibiades: True.
Socrates: Then a man is not the same as his own body?
Alcibiades: That is the inference.
Socrates: What is he, then?
Alcibiades: I cannot say.
Socrates: Nay, you can say that he is the user of the body.
Alcibiades: Yes.
Socrates: And the user of the body is the soul?
Alcibiades: Yes, the soul.”

Plato

Alcibiades I

Soul

“My love, Alcibiades, which I hardly like to confess, would long ago have passed away, as I flatter myself, if I saw you loving your good things, or thinking that you ought to pass life in the enjoyment of them.”

Plato

Socrates speaking to Alcibiades
Alcibiades I

Love , Life , Thinking