Plato
Plato
Platowas a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition. Unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Plato's entire œuvre is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPhilosopher
pain balance action
Do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, near and distant, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other? If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful.
stars eye heaven
Would that I were the heaven, that I might be all full of love-lit eyes to gaze on thee.
kind should
I should not like to say ... that any kind of knowledge is not to be learned; for all knowledge appears to be a good.
unity passionate enmity
The good are like one another, and friends to one another; and ... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing.
army fighting men
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.
music wings giving
Music gives a soul to the universe.
wings race flying
The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine.
vices virtue produce
Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.
gold doe earth
All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue.
indulge-in fancy use
We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in the idle fancy that we already know -- or that it is of no use seeking to know what we do not know.
hands office democracy
A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot.
plato science movement
It was Plato, according to Sosigenes, who set this as a problem for those concerned with these things, through what suppositions of uniform and ordered movements the appearances concerning the movements of the wandering heavenly bodies could be preserved.
beauty natural superiority
Beauty is a natural superiority.
knowledge buying meat
There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.