Thursday, November 14, 2013

Quotes by Plato

I really think that there is no greater education than to merely read the quotes of the masters. So much knowledge in so few lines. I remember collecting several quotes, writing them down from Reader's Digest and its Quotable Quotes, and suffering a heartbreak when I lost that book. But now thanks to the net I have found them all and more.

Here I found in a link some fine quotes by Plato. I was looking for the one where he says that you discover more about a man in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/879.Plato

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

“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.”

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

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination
and life to everything.”

“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.”

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

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

“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.”

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

“Love is a serious mental disease.”

“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

“Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”

“good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”

“There is truth in wine and children”

“I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.”

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

“The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings”

“According to greek mythology, humans were originally created with 4 arms, 4 legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”

“I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts.”

“Those who tell the stories rule society.”

“If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.”

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

“When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them.”

“There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

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

“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? ”

“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.”

"You should not honor men more than truth.”

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