Plato

The mosaic from Pompeii — first century AD, found in the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus — shows seven philosophers gathered under a tree. The central figure, pointing at a globe, is believed to be me. Behind us rises the Acropolis.

The Academy I founded in 387 BC was not a building but a grove — the grove of Academus, a hero whose precinct lay just...

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. Love is a serious mental disease. And yet — what is life without it? An unexamined life is not worth living, my teacher said, and he was right.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. The measure of a man is what he does with power — and most men, given power, reveal themselves.

Knowledge is nothing but recollection. The soul, before its birth into the body, existed in the presence of the Forms and knew them directly. Learning, in this life, is not the acquisition of new information but the recovery of what we already know and have forgotten. When a student suddenly understands a geometrical proof, the understanding does not come...

The particular horse in front of you will die. It will decay. Its bones will dissolve. But horseness — the form, the universal pattern — is eternal, immutable, and more real than any horse you have ever seen. What we perceive with the senses are shadows of the real; what the intellect grasps — the Forms of Beauty, Justice, Equality — these are the true...

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself. Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, cities will never have rest from their troubles. I know this sounds absurd. The philosopher is the least suited for politics, which is precisely why he is the most necessary. He who wants nothing from power is the only person safe to give it to.

Imagine human beings living from childhood in an underground dwelling — a cave — their legs and necks chained from infancy so that they remain fixed in one spot, able only to see before them. Behind and above burns a fire; between the fire and the prisoners, other figures walk, carrying objects which cast shadows upon the wall the prisoners face. These...

Until philosophers rule as kings, or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophise, cities will have no rest from evils.

The beginning is the most important part of every work, especially in the case of anything young and tender.

The sculptor Silanion made this likeness of me, probably around 370 BC, when I was in my late fifties. I find it too severe. My students told me I was warm in conversation, that I laughed easily, that I was a good wrestler in my youth — my name, Plato, came from the breadth of my shoulders. None of this is in the marble.

But perhaps that is appropriate....

The measure of a man is what he does with power. When Socrates was offered the chance to escape execution by fleeing Athens, he declined — not because he could not leave, but because to leave would have been to deny everything he had argued for forty years about the obligation of citizens to their city and its laws. He had more power in that refusal than...