Plato Quotes

Everyone honors the wise.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

All my life I wanted somebody who knew more than I did to tell me the truth.

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

In the truly great, virtue governs with the sceptre of knowledge.

All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.

Follow me, the wise man said, but he walked behind.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

Philosophy is the sum total of all that you know and what you decide is valuable.

The wise speak only of what they know

A great thing is a great book; but a greater thing than all is the talk of a great man.

A wise man is a greater asset to a nation than a king.

[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.

And he is oft the wisest manWho is not wise at all.

The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.

True words aren't eloquent; eloquent words aren't true. Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise. The Master has no possessions. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is. The Tao nourishes by not forcing. By not dominating, the Master leads.

All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men.

The wise man is one who knows what he does not know.

A man cannot learn to be wise any more than he can learn to be handsome.

He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

With children use force; with men reason; such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no law.