Plato Men Quotations

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.

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.

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.

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.

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

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

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

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

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

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

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

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

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

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

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

No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

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

One man cannot practice many arts with success.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

It is right to give every man his due.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.

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

The good man is the only excellent musician, because he gives forth a perfect harmony not with a lyre or other instrument but with the whole of his life.

When man is not properly trained, he is the most savage animal on the face of the globe.

A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.

Men of sound sense have Law for their god, but men without sense Pleasure.

The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.

Every unjust man is unjust against his will.

There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them.

No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.

If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful.

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.

Wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man could ever err, and therefore he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be wisdom no longer.

When I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, having in himself a fairer harmony than that of the lyre.

For every man who has learned to fight in arms will desire to learn the proper arrangement of an army, which is the sequel of the lesson.

Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia.This vast power, gathered into one, endeavored to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits, and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind.

There is nothing so delightful as the hearing, or the speaking of truth. For this reason, there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive.

All men, well interrogated, answer well.

Being well satisfied that, for a man who thinks himself to be somebody, there is nothing more disgraceful than to hold himself up as honored, not on his own account, but for the sake of his forefathers. Yet hereditary honors are a noble and splendid treasure to descendants.

The proud man is forsaken of God.

May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ.

Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.

Of all the things which a man has, next to the gods his soul is the most divine and most truly his own.

Thus does the Muse herself move men divinely inspired, and through them thus inspired a Chain hangs together of others inspired divinely likewise.

He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.

Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well.

It is vain for the sober man to knock at poesy's door.

Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods.

It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories... The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

We see many instances of cities going down like sinking ships to their destruction. There have been such wrecks in the past and there surely will be others in the future, caused by the wickedness of captains and crews alike. For these are guilty men, whose sin is supreme ignorance of what matters most.

Fields and trees are not willing to teach me anything; but this can be effected by men residing in the city.

A man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.

No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.

The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of a bad man.

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

For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge,--such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.

For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them

Let men of all ranks whether they are successful, or unsuccessful, whether they triumph or not; let them do their duty, and rest satisfied.

Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil.

We must, if we are to be consistent, and if we re to have a real pedigree herd, mate the best of our men with the best of our women as often as possible, and the inferior men with the inferior women as seldom as possible, and keep only the offspring of the best.

A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.

...that in our state one man was to do one job, and the job he was naturally most suited for .. And further, we have often heard and often said that justice consists of minding your own business and not interfering with other people.

The principles are important. First, the interest of the state or society counts for everything, that of the individual for nothing. Second, the only difference between men and women is one of physical function- one begets, the other bears children. Apart from that, they both can and should perform the same functions - though men on a whole, perform them better and should receive the same education to enable them to do so; for in this way society will get the best value from both.

It is better to be wise, and not to seem so, than to seem wise, and not be so; yet men, for the most part, desire the contrary.

As the government is, such will be the man.

That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless

Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends.

Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power.....

For though a man should be a complete unbeliever in the being of gods; if he also has a native uprightness of temper, such persons will detest evil in men; their repugnance to wrong disinclines them to commit wrongful acts; they shun the unrighteous and are drawn to the upright.

. . . the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

Such, Echecrates, was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man.

I am about to die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power.

The three wishes of every man: to be healthy, to be rich by honest means, and to be beautiful.

For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.

Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men.

The greatest penalty of evil-doing is to grow into the likeness of bad men, and, growing like them, to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad.

Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings... the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art... So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense... madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.

To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.

We must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things.

And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors.

So the well educated man can learn to sing and dance well.

Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers.

And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

More will be accomplished, and better, and with more ease, if every man does what he is best fitted to do, and nothing else.

Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

The passionate are like men standing on their heads, they see all things the wrong way.

The tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.

Man is a biped without feathers.

Great is the issue at stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one be profited if, under the influence of money or power, he neglect justice and virtue?

Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserve.