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.
Author
Plato
149 quotations
About Plato
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher of Classical Athens who is most commonly considered the foundational thinker of the Western philosophical tradition. An innovator of the literary dialogue and dialectic forms, Plato influenced all the major areas of theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the collection of philosophical theories that would later become known as Platonism.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by PlatoNo man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
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.
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.
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
Philosophy is the highest music.
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
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States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.
Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of b…
When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.
Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
There are three classes of men lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
Death is not the worst that can happen to men.
Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.
The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly c…
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.
A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Wise men speak because they have something to say Fools because they have to say something.
They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.