Plato Quotes

Wealth I desire to have; but wrongfully to get it, I do not wish.

No people ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue.

Truly a man does not live by bread alone. A good name is still to be preferred over great riches. Especially is it to be preferred to the appearance of riches, acquired with nothing down and nothing to pay for two months.

Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.

These days to be great is to exceed on prosperity; greatness today has nothing to do with moral magnanimity.

Prosperity seldom chooses the side of the virtuous.

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

Money and virtue must always be combined.

If fortune makes a wicked man prosperous and a good man poor, there is no need to wonder. For the wicked regard wealth as everything, the good as nothing. And the good fortune of the bad cannot take away their badness, while virtue alone will be enough for the good.

No just person ever became quickly rich.

All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue.

Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor.

While one is asleep one cannot do anything that is good. Virtue is impossible in unconsciousness, only sin is possible. Unconsciousness is the source of sin.

You're fortunate when you can afford to be virtuous.

All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.

Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.

What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.

If I can only keep my good name, I shall have riches enough.

The highest virtue is not virtuous. Therefore it has virtue. The lowest virtue holds on to virtue. Therefore it has no virtue.

How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!

Justice makes the life of such as are in prosperity, power and authority the life of a god, and injustice turns it to that of a beast.

I believe in good. It is an ephemeral and elusive quality. It is the center of my beliefs, but it cannot be strengthened by talking about it.

America should stand for more than just wealth.