Plato Quotes - Page 10

• Beauty ensnares hearts, captures minds, and stirs up emotional wildfires. From Plato to pinups, images of human beauty have catered to a limitless desire to see and imagine an ideal human form.

  Nancy Etcoff

  Beauty, Heart, Emotional

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• Nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sky, Imagination, Lightning

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.33

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• Plato rarely if ever states anything about himself clearly.

  Thomas McEvilley

  States, Ifs

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• Many receive a criticism and think it is fine; think they got their money's worth; think well of the teacher for it, and then go on with their work just the same as before. That is the reason much of the wisdom of Plato is still locked up in the pages of Plato.

  Robert Henri

  Teacher, Thinking, Criticism

  Robert Henri (2007). “The Art Spirit”, p.165, Basic Books

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• Plato--who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to "real" people and everyday events--knew what intellectual experience made for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Education, Children, Real

  Bruno Bettelheim (1976). “The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales”, Knopf

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• Plato calls complacency the companion of loneliness.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Loneliness, Complacency, Companion

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• For the Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy, it is of no importance whether Plato or Aristotle ever lived. For the mystical practice of an Indian, Persian, Chinese, or Neo-Platonic mystic it is a matter of indifference whether Rama, Buddha, Laotse, or Porphyrius are myths or not. The mystic has no personal relation to them. It is not here a question of somebody telling me the truth which of myself I cannot find, but of my finding an access to the depths of the world in the depths of my soul.

  Emil Brunner

  Philosophy, Practice, Soul

  Emil Brunner (1931). “The Word and the World”

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• So too Plato was, in my view, a very unreliable Platonist. He was too much of a philosopher to think that anything he had said was the last word.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Thinking, Views, Too Much

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures 1953”, p.12, Cambridge University Press

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• Here is the mistake of the cut-and-dried man of culture. He goes about with the secret of having learned to appreciate the "grandstyle." He has lived in Homer till he can recall the roll of that many-sounding sea. He has pored over the lofty and pictorial thought of Plato till he begins to pique himself upon its grandeur. His fancy has been fed on the quaint old-world genius of Herodotus, his judgment on the melancholy wisdom of Tacitus and the complacent cynicism of Gibbon--and of all this he is conscious and proud.

  Richard Holt Hutton

  Mistake, Cutting, Men

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• Plato compared the intellect to a charioteer guiding the powerful horses of the passions, i.e., he gave it both the power of perception and the power of control.

  Raymond Cattell

  Horse, Powerful, Passion

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• Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle platonizes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Philosophical, School

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.191, Harvard University Press

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• And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Our World, Violence

  "Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away". Book by Rebecca Goldstein, 2014.

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• Plato conceived of philosophy as necessarily gregarious rather than solitary. The exposure of presumptions is best done in company, the more argumentative the better.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Done, Gregarious

  Rebecca Goldstein (2014). “Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away”, p.41, Pantheon

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• I'm happy to have interns at The Weekly Standard and happy to have readers of The Weekly Standard, but if you all tell me that you were busy reading Plato and [Lev] Tolstoy and playing violin in the orchestra, I'd say that was great. I wouldn't tell you to take time out from that to get involved in political journalism.

  William Kristol

  Reading, Political, Orchestra

  Source: www.chicagomaroon.com

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• The tetrahedron was [ Buckminster Fuller's] big thing. He'd talk about it in the same way Plato talked about angles.

  Paul Laffoley

  Buckminster Fuller, Way, Bigs

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

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• In the academic setting, you take (typically) lonely, interesting middle-aged men and beautiful, intelligent young women, and everybody's motivations for display and conquest are engaged to the max. Sublimated, this can be a powerful force for the good - Plato had a lot to say about that - but acted upon it can bring evils without end.

  Catherine Wilson

  Beautiful, Lonely, Motivation

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato.

  Moses Finley

  Goal, Philosopher, Modern

  "Democracy Ancient And Modern". Book by Moses I. Finley (Second Edition), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 6, 1985.

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• Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good!

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Wise, Law, Perfect

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Gustave Le Bon, Charles Mackay, Wilfred Trotter, Everett Dean Martin (2017). “WHAT IS MOB MENTALITY? - 8 Essential Books on Crowd Psychology: Psychology of Revolution, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Instincts of the Herd, The Social Contract, A Moving-Picture of Democracy...”, p.252, e-artnow

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• Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand.

  Iain Pears

  Dream, Powerful, Philosophy

  Iain Pears (2003). “Dream of Scipio”, p.18, Penguin

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• Plato's dialogues bear at least some similarities to the classical plays.

  Benjamin Jowett

  Play, Bears, Dialogue

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• No intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated.

  Plato

  Intelligent, Men, Language

  Plato (1963). “The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including The Letters”, Bollingen

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• Our love for our children springs from the soul's greatest yearning for immortality.

  Plato

  Children, Spring, Soul

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• Let early education be a sort of amusement. You will then be better able to find out the natural bent.

  Plato

  Education, Amusement, Able

  Plato, Julius A. Sigler (1997). “Education: Ends and Means”, p.32, University Press of America

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• After reading the doctrines of Plato, Socrates or Aristotle, we feel the specific difference between their words and Christ's is the difference between an inquiry and a revelation.

  Joseph Parker

  Christian, Jesus, Reading

  Joseph Parker (1867). “Ecce Deus: Essays on the Life and Doctrine of Jesus Christ : with Controversial Notes on "Ecce Homo".”, p.190

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• God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Oxford, Doe

  "In Victorian Days and Other Papers" by Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, New York: Longmans, (p. 122), 1939.

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