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PLATO & SOCRATES THE THINKING OF : ……………

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PLATO &

SOCRATES

THE THINKING OF :

……………

Aristophanes• Praxagora: I want all to have a share of everything and all property to be in common; there

will no longer be either rich or poor; I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is

private property, common to all.

Blepyrus: But who will till the soil?

Praxagora: The slaves.”

―Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae, line 590-591 & 597-598 & 651 - Ecclesiazusae (392 BC)

• The old are in a second childhood.” ―Aristophanes The Clouds l. 1417 (423 B.C.)

• Characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar

manner.” ―Aristophanes

• Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that

cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.”―Aristophanes

• A man's homeland is wherever he prospers.” ―Aristophanes

• Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.” ―Aristophanes

• Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's

your proof?” ―Aristophanes

Aristophanes• These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: Can't live with

them, or without them.” ―Aristophanes Lysistrata: an English version by Dudley Fitts

(1954 edition)

• Under every stone lurks a politician.” ―Aristophanes

• Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.”

―Aristophanes

• You should not decide until you have heard what both have to say.” ―Aristophanes

• Man naturally is deceitful, ever indeed, and always, in every one thing.” ―Aristophanes

Birds (414 BC)

• Praxagora: Woman is adept at getting money for herself and will not easily let herself be

deceived; she understands deceit too well herself.”

―Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae, line 236-238 - Ecclesiazusae (392 BC)

• Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods,

you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a

dream.” ―Aristophanes Birds, line 685-687 (414 BC

Aristophanes• Hierocles: You will never make the crab walk straight.”―Aristophanes Peace, line 1083

(421 BC)

Plato• Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a

way around the laws.”―Plato

• One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed

by your inferiors.”―Plato

• Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.”

―Plato

• 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.”―Plato

• Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny

and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.”―Plato

• Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say

something.”―Plato

• “Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses

their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of

the genius of each.” ―Plato

Plato• The measure of a man is what he does with power.” ―Plato

• I shall assume that your silence gives consent.” ―Plato Cratylus

• “We are twice armed if we fight with faith.” ―Plato

• “Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say

something.” ―Plato

• “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” ―Plato

• Mankind will never see an end of trouble until... lovers of wisdom come to hold political

power, or the holders of power... become lovers of wisdom.” ―Plato

• A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change

from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing

happens to the soul.” ―Plato

• “Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be

feared and how not to fear what ought no to be feared.” ―Plato

Plato• Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts

and souls of the citizens.” ―Plato

• Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.”

―Plato

• The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all

things most shameful and vile.” ―Plato

• As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest

babblers.” ―Plato

• 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.”―Plato

• 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.”―Plato

Wit and wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle

Plato• “Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous.

Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.”―Plato

• Democracy passes into despotism.” ―Plato The Republic

• Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.”―Plato

• “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” ―Plato The Republic

• The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest

principles.” ―Plato

• “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 character and of wisdom.” ―Plato

• “There is no harm in repeating a good thing.” ―Plato

• “The part can never be well unless the whole is well.” ―Plato

Plato• “Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.” ―Plato

• Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the

law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.”

―Plato

• A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of

us have many wants.” ―Plato

• Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.” ―Plato

• Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.” ―Plato

• Courage is a kind of salvation.” ―Plato

• Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction,

whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.” ―Plato

• For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.” ―Plato

Plato• He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.” ―Plato The Dialogues of Plato

• He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less

power.”

• How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a

dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?”―Plato

• I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by

accident; they came by work.”―Plato

• “If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.” ―Plato

• “Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all;

but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a

much greater misfortune.” ―Plato

• Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.” ―Plato

• Knowledge is true opinion.” ―Plato Theaetetus

Plato• “Man - a being in search of meaning.” ―Plato

• “Man never legislates, but destinies and accidents, happening in all sorts of ways, legislate

in all sorts of ways.” ―Plato

• “Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?” ―Plato Phaedo

• No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.” ―Plato

• “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 being whole is reduced to half.” ―Plato

• “Philosophy begins in wonder.” ―Plato

• “Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.” ―Plato

• “Science is nothing but perception.” ―Plato Variant translation: "Knowledge is

perception." - Theaetetus (360 B.C.E)

Plato• “The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.” ―Plato Republic

• The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.” ―Plato

• “The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable.” ―Plato

• “The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” ―Plato

• The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of

which we are ignorant.” ―Plato

• The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to

appear so.” ―Plato

• There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”

―Plato

• “They certainly give very strange names to diseases.” ―Plato

• 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.” ―Plato

Plato• “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.” ―Plato

Protagoras

• To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.” ―Plato

• Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.” ―Plato

• Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.” ―Plato

• When a Benefit is wrongly conferred, the author of the Benefit may often be said to injure.”

―Plato

• When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same

amount of income.” ―Plato The Republic

• When the citizens of a society can see and hear their leaders, then that society should be

seen as one.” ―Plato The Republic

• “The judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own

soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should

be his guide, not personal experience.” ―Plato The Republic

Plato• Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness,

and both of discontent.” ―Plato The Republic

• “Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and

dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.” ―Plato The Republic

• “When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is

nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the

people may require a leader.” ―Plato The Republic

• The greatest penalty of evildoing is to grow into the likeness of bad men.”

―Plato Laws

• “You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many

of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the

highest matters.” ―Plato Laws

• “Never discourage anyone... who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”

―Plato

• “Necessity, who is the mother of invention.” ―Plato The Republic

Plato• The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.” ―Plato The Republic

• “There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which

makes, and a third which imitates them.” ―Plato The Republic

• The cure of the part should not be attempted without the cure of the whole.”―Plato

• “Pleasure is the bait of sin.” ―Plato

• “I affirm that the just is nothing else than the advantage of the stronger.”―Plato The

Republic

• “They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.” ―Plato

• “There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who when danger is pressing in will not

acknowledge the divine power.” ―Plato

• “Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the

rich. These are at war with one another.” ―Plato

Plato• Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing

a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.” ―Plato

• “Let nobody speak mischief of anybody.” ―Plato

• Too much attention to health is a hindrance to learning, to invention, and to studies of any

kind, for we are always feeling suspicious shootings and swimmings in our heads, and we

are prone to blame studies from them.” ―Plato The Republic

• “Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.” ―Plato

• “In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to

administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician,

or the most eloquent one.” ―Plato

• “Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a

simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information - never flinching, until

by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good - he arrives at the

very end of the intellectual world.” ―Plato

Socrates• The children now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show

disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the

servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They

contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross

their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers.” ―Socrates

• “My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll

become a philosopher.” ―Socrates

• “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.” ―Socrates Socrates quoted by Plato in:

Republic

• “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” ―Socrates

• “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”

―Socrates Socrates quoted by Plato in: Phaedo

• “Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.” ―Socrates

• “Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”

―Socrates Socrates quoted by Plutarch

Socrates• “As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.”

―Socrates

• “To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to

think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the

greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was

the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know

what we do not know?” ―Socrates

• “Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should

hear and see more than we speak.” ―Socrates

• To find yourself, think for yourself.” ―Socrates

• “All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.”

―Socrates

• “Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in

good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.” ―Socrates

• “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like

to have.” ―Socrates

Socrates• “If on the other hand I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all

the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others

is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination

is not worth living.” ―Socrates quoted by Plato in: The Apology

• “Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many

things I have no need of!” ―Socrates Diogenes Laertius

• “Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?”

―Socrates quoted by Plato in: Euthyphro

• Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize

their teachers.” ―Socrates

• Be as you wish to seem.” ―Socrates

• Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.” ―Socrates

• “He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”

―Socrates

Socrates• “I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might

have an unlimited power for doing good.” ―Socrates

• I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.” ―Socrates

• “If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs

it.” ―Socrates

• “It is not living that matters, but living rightly.” ―Socrates

• “Let him that would move the world first move himself.” ―Socrates

• Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.” ―Socrates

• Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.”

―Socrates

• ...we admitted that everything living is born of the dead. For if the soul existed before birth,

and in coming to life and being born can be born only from death and dying, must she not

after death continue to exist, since she has to be born again?” ―Socrates Apology

Socrates• “...the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intelligible, and uniform,

and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and the body is in the very likeness of the human,

and mortal, and unintelligible, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable.”

―Socrates Apology

• “You will know that the divine is so great and of such a nature that it sees and hears

everything at once, is present everywhere, and is concerned with everything.” ―Socrates

Memorabilia I. 4.18 – Xenophon

• “Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.” ―Socrates Diogenes Laertius

• “Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.” ―Socrates“Remember that

there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or

undue depression in adversity.” ―Socrates

• Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of.” ―Socrates

• “Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and

reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the

soul?” ―Socrates

Socrates• “Get married, in any case. If you happen to get a good mate, you will be happy; if a bad

one, you will become philosophical, which is a fine thing in itself.” ―Socrates

• If he who does not know kept silent, discord would cease.” ―Socrates

• “Socrates is guilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing in deities of his

own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state.” ―Socrates Socrates speaking

of himself as quoted by Plato in: Apology 24b

• “Democracy... would, it seems, be a delightful form of government, anarchic and motley,

assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!” ―Socrates

Socrates quoted by Plato in: The Republic, Book 8, 558c

• “In every sort of danger there are various ways of winning through, if one is ready to do

and say anything whatever.” ―Socrates

• “The nearest way to glory — a short cut, as it were — is to strive to be what you wish to be

thought to be.” ―Socrates

• Living or dead, to a good man there can come no evil.” ―Socrates

Socrates• One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one

may have suffered from them.” ―Socrates

• The right way to begin is to pay attention to the young, and make them just as good as

possible.” ―SocratesSocrates quoted by Plato in "Euthyphro“

• “I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with

each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.” ―Socrates

• “The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.” ―Socrates

• “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” ―Socrates

• “The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of

having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it.. Practicing philosophy in

the right way is a training to die easily.” ―Socrates

• “The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.” ―Socrates

• No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks

himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of governm0ent.”―Socrates

Socrates• “Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All

wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire

wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.” ―Socrates

• Nothing is to be preferred before justice.” ―Socrates

• We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must

get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems,

to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess

to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.”

―Socrates

• In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.”

―Socrates

• “He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who might be better employed.”

―Socrates

• I hold that to need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer he does

approach divinity.” ―Socrates

Pythagoras• As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never

know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each

other.”―Pythagoras

• Man know thyself; then thou shalt know the Universe and God.”―Pythagoras

• “Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they will.”―Pythagoras

• If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, then heat; if height, depth also; if solid, then

fluid; hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, calm and tempest, prosperity

and adversity, life and death.”―Pythagoras

• Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body.”―Pythagoras

• Better be mute, than dispute with the Ignorant.”―Pythagoras

• Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men.”

―Pythagoras As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists

• Attempt nothing above thy strength!”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

Pythagoras• In all thou dost first let thy Prayers ascend, And to the Gods thy Labours first commend,

From them implore Success, and hope a prosperous End.”―Pythagoras

• Strength of mind rests in sobriety; for this keeps your reason unclouded by

passion.”―Pythagoras

• Write in the sand the flaws of your friend.” ―Pythagoras

• Above and before all things, worship GOD!”―Pythagoras The Golden Verses

• It is better to suffer, than to do, wrong.”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

• Wealth is a weak anchor, and glory cannot support a man; this is the law of God, that

virtue only is firm, and cannot be shaken by a tempest.”―Pythagoras

• “As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.”

―Pythagoras As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men : With Historical and Explanatory

Notes

• Do not talk a little on many subjects, but much on a few.”―Pythagoras

Pythagoras• “Reason is immortal, all else mortal.” ―Pythagoras As quoted in Lives and Opinions of

Eminent Philosophers

• There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which

created chaos, darkness, and woman.”―Pythagoras

• “In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.”―Pythagoras

• None but God is wise.”―Pythagoras As quoted in The Diegesis

• “It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the

ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the

discords of families.”―Pythagoras

• Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would

choose light for his body and truth for his soul.”―Pythagoras

• “Govern your tongue before all other things, following the gods.” ―Pythagoras The

Symbols

Pythagoras• Cut not fire with a sword.”―Pythagoras

• Having departed from your house, turn not back; for the furies will be your attendants.”

―Pythagoras The Symbols

• Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about

anything.” ―PythagorasAs quoted in Divine Harmony : - The Golden Verses

• “It is not proper either to have a blunt sword or to use freedom of speech ineffectually.

Neither is the sun to be taken from the world, nor freedom of speech from

erudition.”―Pythagoras

• Rejoice not in another man's misfortune!”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

• Be not hasty to speak; nor slow to hear!”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

• If thou intend to do any good; tarry not till to-morrow! for thou knowest not what may

chance thee this night.”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

• Happy is that City that hath a wise man to govern it.”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the

Wise

Pythagoras• To use Virtue is perfect blessedness.”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

• None but a Craftsman can judge of a craft.”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

• Repentance deserveth Pardon.”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

• He is worst of all, that is malicious against his friends.”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the

Wise

• Evil destroyeth itself.”―Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise

• A wound from a tongue is worse than a wound from the sword; the latter affects only the

body — the former, the spirit, the soul.” ―Pythagoras

• “It is only necessary to make war with five things: with the maladies of the body, the

ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditious of the city, and the

discords of families.”

―Pythagoras