A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
Socrates

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
Socrates

An honest man is always a child.
Socrates

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
Socrates

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
Socrates

Be as you wish to seem.
Socrates

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
Socrates

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
Socrates

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.
Socrates

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
Socrates

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher and that is a good thing for any man.
Socrates

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
Socrates

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
Socrates

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

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
Socrates

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
Socrates

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
Socrates

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

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
Socrates

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
Socrates

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
Socrates

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
Socrates

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
Socrates

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
Socrates

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Socrates

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
Socrates

Let him that would move the world first move himself.
Socrates

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
Socrates

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
Socrates

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.
Socrates

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.
Socrates

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
Socrates

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.
Socrates

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Socrates

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.
Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
Socrates

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
Socrates

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.
Socrates

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.
Socrates

Wisdom begins in wonder.
Socrates

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
Socrates

IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS OF PLATO

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

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.
Plato

A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.
Plato

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

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.
Plato

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

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
Plato

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

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.
Plato

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.
Plato

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

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Plato

Attention to health is life greatest hindrance.
Plato

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

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
Plato

Courage is a kind of salvation.
Plato

Courage is knowing what not to fear.
Plato

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.
Plato

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
Plato

Democracy passes into despotism.
Plato

Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
Plato

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
Plato

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.
Plato

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.
Plato

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.
Plato

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
Plato

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

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.
Plato

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
Plato

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.
Plato

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

Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.
Plato

He was a wise man who invented beer.
Plato

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
Plato

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.
Plato

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

He who is of 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

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.
Plato

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

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?
Plato

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

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

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

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
Plato

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.
Plato

I would fain grow old learning many things.
Plato

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

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
Plato

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

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.
Plato

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.
Plato

It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn.
Plato

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.
Plato

It is right to give every man his due.
Plato

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
Plato

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

Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
Plato

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
Plato

Knowledge is true opinion.
Plato

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind.
Plato

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Plato

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
Plato

Life must be lived as play.
Plato

Love is a serious mental disease.
Plato

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
Plato

Man - a being in search of meaning.
Plato

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

Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate in all sorts of ways.
Plato

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

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
Plato

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

Necessity... the mother of invention.
Plato

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

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
Plato

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

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.
Plato

No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.
Plato

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

Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.
Plato

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

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

One man cannot practice many arts with success.
Plato

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

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
Plato

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
Plato

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
Plato

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
Plato

Philosophy begins in wonder.
Plato

Philosophy is the highest music.
Plato

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
Plato

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Plato

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
Plato

Science is nothing but perception.
Plato

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

The beginning is the chiefest part of any work.
Plato

The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Plato

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.
Plato

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.
Plato

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
Plato

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

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.
Plato

The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction.
Plato

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.
Plato

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
Plato

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

The good is the beautiful.
Plato

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
Plato

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
Plato

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.
Plato

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

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.
Plato

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

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
Plato

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
Plato

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

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.
Plato

The wisest have the most authority.
Plato

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

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.
Plato

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

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.
Plato

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.
Plato

There is no such thing as a lovers' oath.
Plato

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.
Plato

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.
Plato

There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.
Plato

They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
Plato

They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.
Plato

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.
Plato

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
Plato

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
Plato

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

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.
Plato

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.
Plato

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.
Plato

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.
Plato

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.
Plato

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

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.
Plato

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.
Plato

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.
Plato

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
Plato

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

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
Plato

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.
Plato

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
Plato

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
Plato

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
Plato

When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.
Plato

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

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
Plato

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato

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

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.
Plato

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

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

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
Plato

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

Your silence gives consent.
Plato