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PPlato

243 collected words

Plato

Life dates uncertain

Athenian philosophical writer whose dialogues ask readers to examine arguments and speakers. Supplied archive attributions remain distinct from the checked reading edition.

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗friendshipjusticedeathtruthwealthpatiencecharacterlove

Life and writing

Plato wrote philosophical discussions that give questions a setting and different speakers. Socrates often leads an exchange, but the literary speaker should not simply be identified with Plato or treated as a transcript of the historical Socrates. A sentence gains meaning from the objection, example or response around it. The reference gives an uncertain ancient birth year; this profile keeps the archive’s exact life dates unset.

The linked Republic is Benjamin Jowett’s English translation. Book II considers education and the importance of beginnings; Book V examines opinion in relation to knowledge and ignorance. Follow a complete exchange and ask who proposes the claim and how it is tested. These passages offer context for the selected themes without making a supplied shortened quotation an authenticated extract from this edition.

Reading this voice

Begin with one exchange in Books II or V of The Republic, separating the dialogue from Jowett’s introductory analysis. The two selected contributor passages concern beginnings and opinion; their wording and source records remain unchanged. They are undated and independently unverified. A biography or related book cannot authenticate all 243 entries under this label or supply their composition dates. Precise life dates are not asserted here.

Subjects to explore

knowledgejusticelearningjudgement

Words to begin with

Quotations and sayings

03Undated
[W]hen men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise,between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil…
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04Undated
["F]or it's not possible," [Socrates] said, "for anybody to experience a greater evil than hating arguments. Hatred of arguments and hatred of human beings come about in the same way. For hatred of human beings arises from artlessly trusting somebody to excess, and believing that human being to be in every way true and sound and trustworthy, and then a little later discovering that this person is wicked and untrustworthy - and then having this experience again with another. And whenever somebody experiences this many times, and especially at the hands of just those he might regard as his most intimate friends and comrades, he then ends up taking offense all the time and hates all human beings and believes there's nothing at all sound in anybody.
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13Undated
If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him.
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19Undated
Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may he a fortress to me all my days? For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself.
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20Undated
...in the running of cities, virtually nothing is done by anyone that is conducive to political health, nor is there a single ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and still remain alive; it would be a case of a solitary human among wild animals, neither wanting to join in their depredations nor able to stand alone against their collective savagery, dead before he'd done any good to his city or friends and useless both to himself and everybody else. Once a person has made all these calculations, he keeps his peace and minds his own business, like someone withdrawing from the prevailing wind into the shelter of a wall in a storm of dust or rain, and as he sees everyone else filling themselves full of lawlessness he is content if he himself can somehow live out life here untainted by injustice and impious actions, and leave it with fine hopes and in a spirit of kindness and good will.
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