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Plato

ancient Athenian philosopher; pupil of Socrates; teacher of Aristotle (428-347 BC)

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

– Plato

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As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have least with are the greatest babblers.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbour.*

– Plato

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Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

– Plato

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Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule.

– Plato

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Friends have all things in common.

– Plato

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He was a wise man who invented God.

– Plato

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He who does not desire power is fit to hold it.

– Plato

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The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men.

– Plato

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Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

– Plato

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Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended.

– Plato

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Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

– Plato

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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.

– Plato

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Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

– Plato

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The harder you work, the luckier you get.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

– Plato

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Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is god, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but never less, dazzaling, passionate, and eternal form.

– Plato

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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.

– Plato

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Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large.

– Plato

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Science is nothing but perception.

– Plato

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Honesty is for the most part, less profitable than dishonesty.

– Plato

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I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

– Plato

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Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten imparting grace.

– Plato

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Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.

– Plato

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Philosophy is the highest music.

– Plato

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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.

– Plato

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

– Plato

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Courage is knowing what not to fear.

– Plato

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Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

– Plato

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You cannot conceive the many without the one.

– Plato

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Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

– Plato

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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.

– Plato

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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.

– Plato

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At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

– Plato

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Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.

– Plato

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Bekind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

– Plato

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Death is not the worst than can happen to men.

– Plato

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For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection-for recalling to, not for keeping in mind.

– Plato

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He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

– Plato

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Hereditary honors are a noble and a splendid treasure to descendants.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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I have good hope that there is something after death.

– Plato

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If a man says that it is right to give every one his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one.*

– Plato

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If one has made a mistake, and fails to correct it, one has made a greater mistake.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

– Plato

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Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

– Plato

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Knowledge is true opinion.

– Plato

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Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

– Plato

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Let him take heart who does advance, even in the smallest degree.

– Plato

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Life must be lived as play.

– Plato

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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.

– Plato

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Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

– Plato

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Men say that everyone is naturally a lover of himself, and that it is right that it should be so. This is a mistake; for in fact the cause of all the blunders committed by man arises from this excessive self-love. For the lover is blinded by the object loved, so that he passes a wrong judgment upon what is just, good, and beautiful, thinking that he ought always to honour what belongs to himself, in preference to truth. For he who intends to be a great man ought to love neither himself nor his own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by himself or by another.

– Plato

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Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.

– Plato

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Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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No human thing is of serious importance.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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Not only is the old man twice a child, but also the man who is drunk.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.

– Plato

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Only the dead have seen the end of war

– Plato

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Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.

– Plato

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Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.N.B. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. See also Napoleon Bonaparte.

– Plato

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So as this only point among the rest remaineth sure and certain, namely, that nothing is certain.

– Plato

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Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehood's school. And the one man who dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.

– Plato

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The beginning is the most important part of the work.

– Plato

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The greatest penalty of evildoing - namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.

– Plato

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The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

– Plato

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The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

– Plato

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The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

– Plato

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The life which is unexamined is not worth living.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

– Plato

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The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs when he first appears he is a protector.

– Plato

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The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

– Plato

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The true lover of learning then must his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth. . .He whose desires are drawn toward knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasures- -I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one. . .Then how can he who has the magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all times and all existence, think much of human life He cannot. Or can such a one account death fearful No indeed.

– Plato

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There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who when danger is pressing in will not acknowledge the divine power.

– Plato

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There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes and a third which imitates them

– Plato

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There are three arts which are concerned with all things one which uses, another which makes, and a third which imitates them.

– Plato

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There is no such thing as a lover's 0ath.

– Plato

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There is no such thing as a lover's oath.

– Plato

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They certainly give very strange names to diseases

– Plato

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They certainly give very strange names to diseases.

– Plato

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To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.

– Plato

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Too much attention to health is a hindrance to learning, to invention, and to studies of any kind, for we are always feeling suspicious shootings and swimmings in our heads, and we are prone to blame studies from them.

– Plato

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We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

– Plato

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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.

– Plato

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We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

– Plato

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Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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Wisdom alone is the true and unalloyed coin for which we ought to exchange all things, for this and with this everything is bought and sold?fortitude, temperance, and justice; in a word, true virtue subsists with wisdom.

– Plato

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Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools, because they have to say something.

– Plato

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Wise men talk because they have something to say fools, because they have to say something.

– Plato

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You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

– Plato

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

– Plato

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

– Plato

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