This Greek philosopher marked a before and after in the culture of Ancient Greece.
Current philosophy would never have become what it is without the figure that was Plato. Thanks to him we were able to reach philosophical conclusions that had not been reached before and thanks to his teachings later philosophers, among others his disciple Aristotle, were able to take philosophy to the next level.
Phrases and teachings of Plato
That is why we have believed the need to make a list with the 80 best phrases of Plato , from here to pay a small tribute to what was this great figure of philosophy. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have enjoyed selecting and rediscovering them!
- Recommended article: “The myth (or allegory) of Plato’s cave”
1. Never discourage someone from making progress, no matter how slow it goes.
No matter how fast you go on your way, the important thing is to advance in it, without a doubt a good philosophy of life.
2. The greatest wealth is living content with little.
He who needs little to be happy will always be happy, because he does not carry the need for things that are really worthless.
3. The first and best victory is to conquer yourself.
The great battle that we always fight is against ourselves, we are our own saboteurs.
4. Ideas are the origin of all things.
Everything is born from an original idea, without that idea you will never develop anything.
5. Courage is knowing what not to be afraid of.
Sometimes we have certain fears in life that are unfounded, and once we face them we discover that we should not have that fear.
6. Knowledge is the food of the soul.
People grow as individuals largely due to the knowledge we absorb throughout our lives.
7. Each heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers to it. Those who want to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
A great way to show our love is with music and poetry, in ancient Greece they already showed the love they processed for something or someone in this way.
8. A house that has a library has a soul.
Undoubtedly a great phrase that indicates the importance that reading already had in society in Plato’s time. Surely, that he found a library in a house at that time, was also a symptom that it was a house of someone respectable.
9. The wise speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
Talking if you don’t have something important and meditated to say only serves to show our lack of culture to others.
10. A dog has the soul of a philosopher.
The lifestyle that many dogs adopt is calm and meditative, very similar to what a philosopher might adopt if we stick to the cliché.
11. The price that good men pay for indifference to public affairs is that of being governed by bad men.
He who is corrupt always yearns for power, and often achieves relevant positions in society.
12. Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that requires practice. We do not act with reason because we are excellent, in fact, we achieve excellence by acting with reason.
Achieving excellence in any field requires practice and experience, only with the passage of time and those two things can it be achieved.
13. The goal of education is to teach us to love the beautiful.
What is education if not teaching us to value the good and relevant things in life and therefore fight for them?
14. False words are not only bad in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
The lie is something that the human being does not really need, but he uses it to manipulate the people around him.
15. Love is a serious desire of the mind.
When we love something, our mind keeps reminding us how much we need it.
16. Good people don’t need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
Being an honest and upright person, it is not necessary for us to have laws to differentiate what is right and what is wrong, but if, on the contrary, we are corrupt and criminals, we will look for a way to avoid any law.
17. I have hardly met a mathematician who is capable of reasoning.
Plato tells us here how two different types of sages at that time were not able to understand each other.
18. Either we find what we are looking for, or at least we free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.
The search for the truth is always positive, even if we do not reach an absolute truth.
19. It was a wise man who invented God.
Undoubtedly, in order to have created religion and the concept of God, someone who had that idea had to be well ahead of his time.
20. If women are expected to do any work like men, we must teach them the same things.
Education for men and women must be the same without differentiating between the sexes.
21. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but the knowledge that is acquired by obligation, does not find any sustenance in the mind.
He who does not want to learn will never learn, because thoughts can change, appear and disappear from one day to the next.
22. Good deeds give strength to ourselves and inspire the good deeds of others.
Doing good is something that is positive for society as a whole, the good performance that you can have today, maybe tomorrow someone will give it to you.
23. Those who tell the story, rule society.
The winner and the powerful is the one who writes history, the rest of us are just dust in the passing of time.
24. Human behavior derives from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge.
These three things lead us in our lives to carry out all our actions, to know what we want, what we want and what we need.
25. You are my star, and my astronomer too; And I wish that I were the sky, with a billion eyes to look at you!
A very nice dedication that we would all like someone to tell us.
26. There are three kinds of men: lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor and lovers of gain.
The sage, the soldier and the merchant. There are also those who are all three things at the same time or a combination of them.
27. Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, much less believed by the masses.
Many people are not able to see the ins and outs of society and when you try to make them see it, they simply do not believe it.
28. There are two things a person should never be angry with: what can help them, and what can’t.
What can help us is positive and what does not, simply does not commit us.
29. Books are immortal children who defy their parents.
The writer always seeks to improve himself, and when he writes a great book his greatest challenge is to overcome the previous one he wrote.
30. Of all the animals, the child is the most difficult to handle.
Knowing how to educate a child is one of the greatest responsibilities of our lives.
31. You should not honor man more than the truth.
The truth is what is really important, not the person who claims to represent, and you have to know how to differentiate when that person is in possession of it or not.
32. Musical innovation is fraught with danger for the State, since when the modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
Plato tells us about how music influences people’s moods and how it can also be an indicator of a change in society.
33. Time is the living image of reality.
Time is the basis of everything that surrounds us, there is always a beginning and an end to all things, everything has its own time.
34. Writing is the geometry of the soul.
With writing we can grow as people since it puts us in contact with our thoughts, when we write we always listen to our inner voice.
35. I would like to teach children music, physics and philosophy; but more importantly, music, because the patterns of music and all the arts, are the keys to learning
With the use of music we can teach others many things because this is a much more educational and entertaining way of learning something.
36. Any man can easily do harm, but not all men can do others good.
The one who does good to others is much more valuable than the one who does evil and can also be much more misunderstood in society for this reason.
37. Man is a being in search of meaning.
All men seek a goal in life or a vocation, we all want to give our life a meaning, a meaning.
38. The direction in which a man’s education begins will determine his future life.
The way we are educated conditions us for the rest of our lives, because at an early stage of it we are much more easily influenced.
39. The one who loves, does not take paths in the dark.
Loving someone lights a flame within us. There is no dark path that our loved one does not traverse.
40. The beauty of style, harmony, grace and good rhythm, depend on simplicity.
The simplest things are usually the best and bringing that simplicity to everything including art usually pays off very well.
41. Knowledge becomes bad if the goal is not virtuous.
Knowledge should not be used to do evil, because this knowledge is used to destroy not to build, which is the basis for which man has that thirst for knowledge.
42. Growing old has a great sense of calm and freedom when the passions relax, then as Socrates says: we are free from understanding and not only from a crazy teacher, but from many.
When we get older is when we reach our maximum wisdom, and thanks to it we see who throughout our lives was right with their words and who was not.
43. Too much licentiousness seems to turn into nothing but too much slavery.
Licentiousness can lead us to be slaves to our own vices, work dignifies people.
44. If our citizens are well educated and become judicious men, they will easily see their way through all this.
Education is the basis on which any society should start, lack of education and lack of culture leads us to carry out acts that are often counterproductive.
45. Twice and three more as suggested, it is appropriate to check and repeat what is right.
When we are not totally sure about something, we should review it as many times as necessary.
46. Arguments derived from probabilities are inactive.
No probability in anything is one hundred percent, and therefore there is always a probability of error.
47. You must not assume that it is true that stones are sacred and pieces of wood, birds, snakes and human beings are not. Of all those things, the most sacred is a good human being and the most polluted is an evil one.
The human being is capable of all the best and all the worst in this world, because evil is a quality that only occurs in the human being.
48. Humiliation is the first step to knowledge, even when we refer to the most common things.
Knowledge always begins in the people of a previous ignorance and the need we have to fill that void.
49. The love of the noblest, even if people are less beautiful than others, is especially honorable.
Love does not reside in beauty but in a pure feeling that occurs between two people.
50. The definition of the good is reduced by successive questions and the virtue is consolidated by being identical to the knowledge that is generated.
Suggestive phrase that tells us about ignorance in people and the duty to put an end to it to become judicious.
51. The God of love lives from a need, like hunger and thirst, it is almost impossible to eradicate.
We all need to be loved in our lives, it is a need that we have without knowing why.
52. Naive loves are considered more honorable than hidden ones.
Love is always love in all its facets, whether it is well or badly seen by society, two people who love each other are always equally honorable.
53. The essence of the non-beautiful must be separated and opposed to a certain type of existence that is called beautiful.
The search for beauty is something that man has always sought to represent through art.
54. Love is especially concerned with the good and is perfected with the company of reserve and justice, whether between gods or men.
Love improves us as a society and helps us understand each other and reach consensus among us.
55. Justice is nothing other than the convenience of the strongest.
Justice is always carried out by the one who can impose it on the rest, that is why justice seeks an equality between people.
56. All learning is found in the disciple, not in the teacher.
The one who must learn is always the student, and it is he who must do his part.
57. Integrity is the light that guides your path.
Being upright and honest people leads us along the path of good throughout our lives.
58. You have not discovered a recipe for memory, but as a reminder.
People often use certain techniques to not forget something, such as associating it with something that reminds us of it.
59. The vulgar cling to life, because the only thing they take care of is the body and the pleasures of the senses, forgetting that they have a soul, and thus death terrifies them, because when the body is destroyed, it is seen deprived of what he loves most.
In ancient Greece, many people were conditioned by their class or social stratum, which differentiated them from one another. The powerful were those who could dedicate themselves to a more spiritual life and personal growth, the poor did not have access to that kind of life.
60. Above all the things that hurt our senses in this world, there are purely intelligible beings, which are the perfect, absolute, eternal, immutable types of everything imperfect that exists in this world.
There is no greater defect than not accepting our own defects, because therefore we will never solve them.
61. Let us retrace our steps to return to the foundation of reason.
Looking back can help us as a society to see where we have made a mistake or where we have deviated from the search for the common good.
62. The man who does everything that leads to happiness depends on himself, and not on other men; he has adopted the best plan to live happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and wisdom.
The search for happiness leads us to be better people with ourselves and for others, that makes us be seen by the rest as someone successful.
63. In practice, people who study philosophy for too long, become very weird, if not totally vicious; while even those who are the best end up reduced to complete uselessness as members of society.
The philosophers in ancient Greece were people who led a contemplative and idle life, which could lead them to fall into vices and illness.
64. In politics we assume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to run a city or a state. When we are sick we do not ask for the most handsome doctor, or the most eloquent.
Plato spoke here of the need for a technocratic government, to lead a country or a city you have to be a good manager and have proven your worth for it.
65. The soul does not take anything with her to the other world, more than her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the other world, education and culture can provide the greatest help, or on the contrary, they can act as the greatest burden for the person who has just died.
Everything material will not come with us after we die, but who we are as a person will.
66. It is necessary to expel the demons of lies.
The lie would not be necessary in an ideal society and therefore in the search for this we must get rid of that ballast that is falsehood.
67. Knowing is nothing more than remembering, and remembering presupposes prior knowledge; therefore, if the soul remembers things that it has not been able to know in this life, it is a proof that it has existed before.
Plato offers us this theory about reincarnation, why do we sometimes remember things or places where we have never been?
68. The consequence of everything is that the soul exists before our appearance in this world and the same the essences.
The existence of the soul has always been the search for something intangible, something that cannot be seen, but that we all know is there.
69. When an income tax has to be paid, the honest man will pay more and the unjust man less on the same amount of income.
There have always been those who have tried to avoid their duties with finance, even in ancient Greece.
70. Educators must reflect on the simplest and most effective methods to change the way of thinking.
The search for a better and more effective education has always been the subject of debate by pedagogues of all times.
71. The greatest incentive for evil is pleasure.
Personal pleasure is something that can lead us to do evil in our lives, it is a high price for a pleasant moment.
72. Even the gods love jokes.
Humor has always been present in all periods of history and this has been represented by mythology.
73. Love is the source of all our happiness and harmony.
Love is something that helps foster good relationships between people, it is also a creator of harmony where it abounds.
74. On many occasions, the right question is usually more important than the correct answer.
A correct answer is always due to a well formulated question, if this has not been, we will never get to make a correct answer.
75. There is simple ignorance, which is the source of the slightest offenses, and there is also double ignorance, which is accompanied by a presumption of wisdom. Who is under the influence of the latter, imagines that he knows everything when in reality he knows nothing.
Ignorant people tend to believe they are wiser than they really are, because their own ignorance does not allow them to see beyond.
76. Actions are modified according to the form of their performance.
How you perform an action can make it something very different, because the importance of something is not only in doing it, but also in how to do it.
77. Those who govern the state should be the only people who have the privilege to lie. Whether at home or abroad, they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.
Lying in politics has always been very widespread.
78. Injustice is often censured by the blind who are afraid of suffering and not precisely because of the fear they have of committing injustice.
Not wanting to see the injustices makes us not face them directly, and therefore we are not able to tackle them at the root.
79. Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents that happen in all kinds of ways, legislate in all kinds of ways.
Although something is not legislated, the success of events causes precedents to be created with which legislation will later be passed.
80. The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to bear the vision of the divine.
People believe what we want to believe, even if we are seeing that what we believe is not true.
To the classic question “what do you do?” I always answer “basically I am a psychologist”. In fact, my academic training has revolved around the psychology of development, education and community, a field of study influenced my volunteer activities, as well as my first work experiences in personal services.