Plato Quotes - Page 14

• When has the world seen a phenomenon like this? a lonely uninstructed youth, coming from amid the moral darkness of Galilee, even more distinct from His age, and from every thing around Him, than a Plato would be rising up in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a position at the head of the world and maintaining it, for eighteen centuries, by the pure self-evidence of His life and doctrine.

  Horace Bushnell

  Lonely, New Beginnings, Self

  Horace Bushnell (2001). “The Character of Jesus”, p.60, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.

  Harold Bloom

  Order, Ideas, Iliad

  Harold Bloom (2004). “Where Shall Wisdom be Found?”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

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• I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing: while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them, and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts. And what's more, you would've hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris and thought the Bible was mostly bulls**t.

  Bill Maher

  Father, Thinking, Paris

  "Mark Levin Rips Bill Maher for Saying Founding Fathers Would Have Hated Tea Partiers" by Noel Sheppard, www.newsbusters.org. January 18, 2011.

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• Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in.

  John Dewey

  Men, Slavery, Purpose

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education”, p.88, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Behold Plato's man!"

  Diogenes

  Men, Animal, Lectures

  "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6: The Cynics". Book by Diogenes Laërtius translated by R. D. Hicks, 1925.

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• Every theory of love, from Plato down teaches that each individual loves in the other sex what he lacks in himself.

  G. Stanley Hall

  Sex, Individual, Theory

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• So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself; for you must remember that your attentions will not merely celebrate a beauty but create one; that yours is love that brings it own birth with it, just as Plato has declared, and that you should therefore give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them

  William H. Gass

  Giving Up, Writing, Blue

  William H. Gass (2014). “On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry”, p.89, New York Review of Books

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• Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure.

  Tom Robbins

  Oedipus, Claims, Unexamined Life

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• Plato feels that ethical abstinences and austerities are essential preconditions for the cleansing and opening of the eye of the soul.

  Thomas McEvilley

  Eye, Soul, Essentials

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

  Plato

  Leadership, Power, Men

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• And when he [the author of the universe] had compounded the whole, he divided it up into as many souls as there are stars, and allotted each soul to a star. And mounting them on their stars, as if on chariots, he showed them the nature of the universe and told them the laws of their destiny. - "Timaeus" by Plato 427-347 B.C.

  Wendy Mass

  Stars, Destiny, Law

  Wendy Mass (2008). “Every Soul a Star: A Novel”

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• Plato spoke of the necessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our sane self control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the spirit.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Letting Go, Mean, Dark

  FaceBook post by Madeleine L'Engle from Nov 04, 2016

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• Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.

  Ray Bradbury

  Men, Blood, Gardening

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• First and foremost, note that Plato always wrote dialogues, and never attempted to produce a theoretical or scientific treatise. This is a big clue for me. From beginning to end, Plato was aware of the limits of theoretical and technical reasoning, and his dialogues are a massive exploration.

  David Roochnik

  Clue, Exploration, Dialogue

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In spreading his ideas, Plato was willing to employ emotional appeals, state propaganda, and the use of force.

  Bertrand Russell

  Emotional, Ideas, Use

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• As a human being Plato mingles regal, exclusive, and self-contained features with melancholy compassion.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Compassion, Self, Melancholy

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• Plato has dramatic strength ... but is quite unaware of the strength of the argument against his position ... and allows himself to be grossly unfair in arguing against it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Arguing, Argument, Dramatic

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• There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.

  Walter Kaufmann

  Men, Average, Doctrine

  Walter Kaufmann (2008). “Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist”, p.151, Princeton University Press

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• It is true, indeed, that the account Plato gives in 'Timaeus' is different from what he says in his so-called 'unwritten teachings.'

  Aristotle

  Teaching, Giving, Different

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• You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.

  Richard Rorty

  Philosophical, Giving, Asking

  Interview with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, believermag.com. June 1, 2003.

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• I got to dislike parties, like Jefferson and Madison. I think they're harmful. But the system is flawed so badly. I like what Plato said, long ago. Democracy is fit only for a small country. Can't survive in a large country.

  Jack Kevorkian

  Country, Party, Thinking

  "Verge Q+A: Dr. Jack Kevorkian". Interview with Howie Kahn, www.gq.com. June 28, 2010.

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• When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me,--when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged with the same hue, and do as it were run into one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, why should I count Egyptian years?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Years, Two

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.151, Harvard University Press

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• I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.

  Plato

  Art, Numbers, Odd

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• Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument.

  Plato

  Numbers, Soul, Argument

  Plato, Julius A. Sigler (1997). “Education: Ends and Means”, p.24, University Press of America

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• Socrates condemned art because he preferred philosophy and only after much internal struggle did Plato accept this judgment.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Philosophy, Struggle

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