Philosopher · Greek · 152 quotes
States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.
Plato
Philosopher · Greek
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.
Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.
Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.
No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.
The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.
When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.
Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
One man cannot practice many arts with success.
As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.
They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
We are twice armed if we fight with faith.
The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.
He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.
Not to help justice in her need would be an impiety.
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.
The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.
This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.
To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
