Plato Quotes - Page 9

• When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato's world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion.

  Arthur Koestler

  Real, Ideas, Perfection

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• Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.

  Seneca the Younger

  Philosophy, Science, Doe

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• I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson - the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

  James A. Michener

  Thinking, People, Political

  "The World Is My Home". Book by James A. Michener, 1991.

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• When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ideas, Debtors, Exalted

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.14

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• I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Writing, Development, Sacred

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “The World as Will and Representation”, p.417, Courier Corporation

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• the old axiom that 'all power corrupts' has doubtful validity, because it derives from our neglect of Plato's advice to find men carefully and train them by methods which make them fit for heroes.

  Oswald Mosley

  Hero, Men, Advice

  "Rules of the Game/Beyond the Pale". Book by Nicholas Mosley, 1982.

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• Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Tangled, Might, Beard

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.177, Harvard University Press

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• The Gospels were not thought of as works of literature. People were not concerned with the literary reputation of Matthew or Mark, but with the substance of their records of our Lord's life. They did not have to respect their actual words, as they would if they were transcribing the works of Thucydides or Plato.

  Frederic G. Kenyon

  People, Substance, Records

  "The Story Of The Bible" by Frederic G. Kenyon. Ch. X, The Position Today, p. 135, 1949.

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• Since the time of Plato and Aristotle philosophers have had an interest in taking note of common fallacies in reasoning.

  Randal Marlin

  Philosopher, Common, Notes

  Randal Marlin (2013). “Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion - Second Edition”, p.110, Broadview Press

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• It has been a long road from Plato's Meno to the present, but it is perhaps encouraging that most of the progress along that road has been made since the turn of the twentieth century, and a large fraction of it since the midpoint of the century. Thought was still wholly intangible and ineffable until modern formal logic interpreted it as the manipulation of formal tokens. And it seemed still to inhabit mainly the heaven of Platonic ideals, or the equally obscure spaces of the human mind, until computers taught us how symbols could be processed by machines.

  Allen Newell

  Taught Us, Space, Long

  "Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search". Communications of the ACM 19 (3), (p. 125), March 1976.

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• While the poet entertains he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet--whom Plato banned from his Republic--may rise up to save us all.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Fashion, War, Play

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

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• I was a bookworm, and very skinny with big, thick glasses. I never went on dates and guys were afraid of me because I was smart. So I got contact lenses, started to dress a little better and tried not to talk about Plato with boys. It worked!

  Julianne Moore

  Smart, Boys, Glasses

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• Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another.

  Mason Cooley

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Symposium

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• An interlude of false innocence has passed. Today, as we enter the post-photographic era, we must face once again the ineradicable fragility of our ontological distinctions between the imaginary and the real, and the tragic elusiveness of the Cartesian dream. We have indeed learnt to fix the shadows, but not to secure their meanings or to stabilize their truth values; they still flicker on the walls of Plato's cave.

  William J. Mitchell

  Dream, Wall, Real

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• As Plato insisted two thousand years ago, it is not by means of the image that moral, ethical, or political knowledge is produced.

  Abigail Solomon-Godeau

  Mean, Years, Two

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• We are finally living in Plato's cave, if we consider how those who were imprisoned within the cave - who could do nothing but watch those shadows passing on the back wall - were convinced that those shadows were their one and only reality. I see a profound similarity to all this in the epoch we're now living in. We no longer live simply through images: we live through images that don't even exist, which are the result not of physical projection but of pure virtuality.

  Jose Saramago

  Wall, Reality, Passing On

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• In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Ideas, Republic, Gadflies

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• No space, no time, no gravity, no electromagnetism, no particles. Nothing. We are back where Plato, Aristotle and Parmenides struggled with the great questions: How Come the Universe, How Come Us, How Come Anything? But happily also we have around the answer to these questions. That's us.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Space, Answers, Gravity

  "Peering Through the Gates of Time" by Dennis Overbye, www.nytimes.com. March 12, 2002.

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• When I was young, we thought that Oscar Wilde was a great nobleman who had thrown his life away for love. Nothing could be less true. He slept with East Enders who were procured for him by Lord Alfred Douglas. He knew them only 'in Braille' - the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial - after a life like that?

  Quentin Crisp

  Boys, Names, Oxford

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• Not only were the Jews expecting the birth of a Great King, a Wise Man and a Saviour, but Plato and Socrates also spoke of the Logos and of the Universal Wise Man 'yet to come'. Confucius spoke of 'the Saint'; the Sibyls, of a 'Universal King'; the Greek dramatist, of a saviour and redeemer to unloose man from the 'primal eldest curse'. All these were on the Gentile side of the expectation. What separates Christ from all men is that first He was expected; even the Gentiles had a longing for a deliverer, or redeemer. This fact alone distinguishes Him from all other religious leaders.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wise, Religious, Kings

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• If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini.

  Eric Stoltz

  Wine, Dry, Red

  "Fictional character: Chet". "Kicking and Screaming", www.imdb.com. 1995.

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• John Adams was a farmer, Abraham Lincoln a small town lawyer. Plato and Socrates were teachers. Jesus was a carpenter. To equate wisdom and judgement with occupation is at best insulting.

  Mark Sheppard

  Teacher, Jesus, Judgement

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• Plato once wanted to punish one of his slaves and asked his nephew to do the actual whipping for he himself did not own his anger.

  Seneca the Younger

  Nephew, Slave, Whipping

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• Most people do not understand until old age what Plato tells them when they are young.

  Plutarch

  People, Age, Young

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• Plato, quite decadently, wore an earring while young.

  Sextus Empiricus

  Young, Earrings

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