Plato Quotes

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.

First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.

Metaphysical world.- It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

If our minds could get hold of one abstract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth is concerned. My trouble is to find out how we can get hold of the truth at all.

We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but 'tis vain to ask. Whether there be body or not? That is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.

... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.

There is philosophy, which is about conceptual analysis - about the meaning of what we say - and there is all of this ... all of life.

Thinking does not lead to truth; truth is the beginning of thought.

My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?'

After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is of greater weight, and their judgment more to be relied on, because they are believed to have paid attention, not to matters of fiction, but to the investigation of the truth.

You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.

Metaphysics is a science.

Science is nothing but perception.