Plato Quotes - Page 16

• I got to dislike parties, like Jefferson and Madison. I think they're harmful. But the system is flawed so badly. I like what Plato said, long ago. Democracy is fit only for a small country. Can't survive in a large country.

  Jack Kevorkian

  Country, Party, Thinking

  "Verge Q+A: Dr. Jack Kevorkian". Interview with Howie Kahn, www.gq.com. June 28, 2010.

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• You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.

  Richard Rorty

  Philosophical, Giving, Asking

  Interview with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, believermag.com. June 1, 2003.

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• There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.

  Walter Kaufmann

  Men, Average, Doctrine

  Walter Kaufmann (2008). “Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist”, p.151, Princeton University Press

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• Socrates condemned art because he preferred philosophy and only after much internal struggle did Plato accept this judgment.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Philosophy, Struggle

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• There is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on Plato's secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no 'Bible,' nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic - but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life - a Greek life which he repudiated - without an Aristophanes!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Book, Greek, Bed

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL - Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future: The Critique of the Traditional Morality and the Philosophy of the Past”, p.24, e-artnow

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• As a human being Plato mingles regal, exclusive, and self-contained features with melancholy compassion.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Compassion, Self, Melancholy

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• Had there been no Plato, the Christians would have had a harder time selling the idea that all God really wanted from us was fraternal love.

  Richard Rorty

  Christian, Ideas, Selling

  Richard Rorty (1999). “Philosophy and Social Hope”, ePenguin

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• Plato's concern is not just an intellectual issue, but it is knitted with emotional life as well.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Emotional, Issues, Intellectual

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• Plato has dramatic strength ... but is quite unaware of the strength of the argument against his position ... and allows himself to be grossly unfair in arguing against it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Arguing, Argument, Dramatic

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• In spreading his ideas, Plato was willing to employ emotional appeals, state propaganda, and the use of force.

  Bertrand Russell

  Emotional, Ideas, Use

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• Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason Socrates defined philosophy as thanatou mélétè (preparation for death; Plato, Phaedo, 81a). Indeed, without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing.

  Luce Irigaray

  Philosophy, Real, Preparation

  Luce Irigaray (2002). “Between East and West: From Singularity to Community”, p.27, Columbia University Press

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• Art- speech is the only truth. An artist is usually a damned liar but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day and that is all that matters. Away with eternal truth. The truth lives from day to day, and the marvelous Plato of yesterday is chiefly bosh today.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Art, Liars, Yesterday

  D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey (2003). “Studies in Classic American Literature”, p.14, Cambridge University Press

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• My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Philosophy, Mind, Study

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• Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two.

  Bertrand Russell

  Two, Preparation, Characteristics

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.150, Routledge

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• Church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus. We invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolves every question even when it is not entirely true over the mercy and grace of God.

  Richard Rohr

  Jesus, Dust, Practice

  Richard Rohr (2011). “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life”, p.56, John Wiley & Sons

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• No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

  Robert McKee

  Civilization, Citizens, Too Much

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• I'm sure that if Plato hadn't been against music with a strong sexual beat, Bloom would have kept quiet about rock-and-roll.

  E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

  Strong, Rocks, Rock And Roll

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• I imagine that whenever the mind perceives a mathematical idea, it makes contact with Plato's world of mathematical concepts... When mathematicians communicate, this is made possible by each one having a direct route to truth, the consciousness of each being in a position to perceive mathematical truths directly, through the process of 'seeing'.

  Roger Penrose

  Ideas, Mind, World

  Roger Penrose (1999). “The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics”, p.554, OUP Oxford

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• It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman,--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summit of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always accelerated march.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Circles, Long

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1905). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”

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• Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.

  Edith Hamilton

  Believe, Reality, Satisfaction

  Edith Hamilton (1957). “The Echo of Greece”, New York : W. W. Norton

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• Plato found fault that the poets of his time filled the world with wrong opinions of the gods, making light tales of that unspotted essence, and therefore would not have the youth depraved with such opinions.

  Philip Sidney

  Light, Essence, World

  Sir Philip Sidney, Richard Bellings (1724). “The works of the Honourable Sr. Philip Sidney, kt. in prose and verse: In three volumes. ...”

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• In all the good Greek of Plato
  I lack my roastbeef and potato.
  
  A better man was Aristotle,
  Pulling steady on the bottle.

  John Crowe Ransom

  Philosophical, Men, Greek

  John Crowe Ransom (1978). “Selected Poems”

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• I like people who like Plato.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  People

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.390

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• He that makes himself famous by his eloquence, justice or arms illustrates his extraction, let it be never so mean; and gives inestimable reputation to his parents. We should never have heard of Sophroniscus, but for his son, Socrates; nor of Ariosto and Gryllus, if it had not been for Xenophon and Plato.

  Seneca the Younger

  Mean, Son, Greatness

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• Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men; and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,--that they shall hear worse orators than themselves.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Regret, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.56, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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