Plato Quotes

There is no real excellence in all of this world which can be separated from right living.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Honor is the reward of virtue.

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent.

The virtues [moral excellence] therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

A good moral character is the first essential. It is highly important not only to be learned but to be virtuous.

We can be wise from goodness and good from wisdom.

Birth is nothing where virtue is not

True education seeks to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also honest men and women with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love.

No one dies too soon who has finished the course of perfect virtue.

Every virtuous man is free.

Virtue is its own revenge.

Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue.

Without virtue, happiness cannot be.

People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.

Virtue which shuns, the day.

To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

Virtue is no empty echo.

Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.

The happy man . . . will be always or at least most often employed in doing and contemplating the things that are in conformity with virtue. And he will bear changes of fortunes most nobly, and with perfect propriety in every way.

To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.