Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Plato NULL

Classical Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Writer of Philosophical Dialogues, Founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world, Student of Socrates

"There is a difference... between fearlessness and courage."

"Thinking is the talking of the soul [the mind] with itself."

"This harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is virtue; but the particular training in respect of pleasure and pain, which leads you always to hate what you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love from the beginning of life to the end, may be separated off; and, in my view, will be rightly called education."

"They cure the body with mind, and the mind which has become sick, can cure nothing."

"Time was created as an image of eternity."

"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 may have the less."

"Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors. They taste no real or substantial pleasure; but, resembling so many brutes, with eyes always fixed on the earth, and intent upon their loaden tables, they pamper themselves in luxury and excess."

"Truth is a noble thing, and an enduring."

"To a good man nothing that happens is evil."

"Vice is ignorance. Virtue is knowledge."

"Virtue is free, and as a man honors and dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser."

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

"We must conclude that education is not what it is said to be by some, who profess to put into a soul knowledge that was not there before - rather as if they could but sight into blind eyes. On the contrary, our argument indicates that this is a capacity which is innate in each man’s soul, and that the faculty by which he learns is like an eye which cannot be turned from darkness to light unless the whole body is turned; in the same way the entire soul must be turned away from this world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality, and at the brightest of all realities which we have called the Good."

"Wonder is the only beginning of philosophy."

"If the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul. The great error in our day in the treatment of the human body is the physicians separate the soul from the body."

"When a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs... and his whole life is passed in warbling and the delights of song, in the first stage of the process the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made useful, instead of brittle and useless. But, if he carries on the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he begins to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of his soul."

"Virtue is one, but... the forms of vice are innumerable."

"Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a an honors or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility of the chooser."

"A name is an instrument of teaching and of distinguishing natures, as the shuttle is of distinguishing the threads of the web."

"And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us."

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

"Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it becomes an error of the understanding."

"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."

"Better be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune."

"Democracy comes into being after the poor have conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder they give an equal share of freedom and power; and this is the form of government in which the magistrates are commonly elected by lot."

"Do not, then, train boys to learning by force and harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be the better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."

"Do not train boys to learning by force and 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."

"Death is the separation of the soul from the body."

"Education has two branches - one of gymnastic, which is concerned with the body, and the other of music, which is designed for the improvement of the soul. And gymnastic has also two branches - dancing and wrestling; and one sort of dancing imitates muscial recitation, and aims at preserving dignity and freedom, the other aims at producing health, agility, and beauty in the limbs and parts of the body, giving the proper flexion and extension to each of them, a harmonious motion being diffused everywhere, and forming suitabile accompaniment to the dance."

"Do thine own work, and know thyself."

"Education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul."

"Evils... can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among the Gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the earthly nature and this mortal sphere. Wherefore 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 and just and wise."

"Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night."

"Everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created."

"First among the virtues found in the state, wisdom comes into view."

"For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretended knowledge of the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance?"

"Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues."

"He whom love touches not walks in darkness."

"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 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."

"If a man be endued with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility."

"In all the tragedy and comedy of life, pain is mixed with pleasure."

"In youth good men often appear to be simple, and are easily practiced upon by the dishonest, because they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls."

"It is man's goal to grow into the exact likeness of God."

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

"Law, the despot of mankind, often compels us to do many things which are against nature."

"Mankind will never see an end of trouble until... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power... become lovers of wisdom."

"Medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution and making them loving friends, is a skillful practitioner."

"Let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the [child's] natural bent."

"Light is the shadow of God."