Biography:
Plato was a classical Greek philosopher born 428-7 B.C.E and died in 348-7 B.C.E at the age of 80-81. The trio of Plato, Socrates (his teacher) and Aristotle (his student) they laid the fundamentals of Western philosophy. Along with being a mathematician he was a also a philosopher and a founder of an Academy in Athens, which was first institute which imparted higher end education to students. Socrates has a large influence of his thinking and teachings.
Plato was born in a wealthy family to Ariston and Perictione. According to Diogenes' Plato's birth was a result of Ariston's rape of Perictione. He had two older brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus, and a sister, Potone. Plato also had a half brother, Antiphon when his mother remarried after his father died.
Even though Plato's family did have political connections they were not commendable. His uncle (Charmides) was a member of "Thirty Tyrants" who destroyed the Athenian democracy in 404 B.C.E.
Though people know him by the name of Plato, his given name was Aristocles while Plato was his nickname given to him because of his broad forehead.
Plato began his philosophical career under the guidance of Socrates. When Socrates died he traveled to Egypt and Italy studied in Pythagoras and then remained as an advisor for the rulers of Syracuse. When he returned to Athens around the age of forty he started his own academy, where he tried to impart the Socratic style of teaching to his students. The Academy operated till 529 A.D. after which it was closed, thinking it was a threat to Christianity.
Plato and Socrates:
Though Plato was a part of Socratic followers, he didn't make it open. During the last days of Socrates, during the trial any followers including Adeimantus (Plato's brother), came to meet him, but Plato citied the reason that he was ill. He distanced himself from the inner circle of followers of Socrates, which he mentions in his work 'Apology'.
Narration of Dialogues and Socrates:
In his works Plato never makes himself a part of the dialogues nor does he claim that he heard any of the dialogues. While in some dialogues there is no narrator, in other Socrates is speaking to some unknown friend as a first person. Three dialogues (Phaedo, Symposium, and Theaetetus) were narrated by students of Socrates, as distant memories. Phaedo is an account of Socrates' final conversation and hemlock drinking, narrated by Phaedo to Echecrates. Symposium is a narration by Apollodorus to Glaucon, of a story that took place when he was an infant. With the exception of Theaetetus, there is no mention how this oral transmission of dialogues was known to Plato.
The facts that Plato is not a part of the narrations and the belief that he was a part of Socrates inner circle, sometimes clashes. The chronology of the characters in his narrations is conflicting. In the Protagoras, Alcibiades and Agathon are teenage boys growing beards, and Apollodoros and Glaucon are fathers of teenage sons. While in reality Glaucon and Apollodorus were infants and Alcibiades and Agathon were full-grown men when the 'Symposium' narrations took place.
The 'Trial of Socrates' is one event which connects all the dialogues. This may be the reason why the work 'Apology' is one of the most read dialogues. In this dialogue, Socrates dismisses rumors that he is a sophist and the long standing slander will be the main reason for his demise. The legal reasons implicated against him are false. His decision to solve the riddle of Oracle made everyone think that he was a menace to Athens, which was false.
PLATO QUOTES
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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
PLATO, Ion
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
PLATO, The Republic
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
PLATO, The Republic
The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
PLATO, The Republic
Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.
PLATO, The Republic
Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends.
PLATO, Lysis
If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.
PLATO, The Republic
Was not this ... what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom -- to know what is known and what is unknown to us?
PLATO, Charmides
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.
PLATO, The Republic
In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.
PLATO, Lysis
The eyes ... are the windows of the soul.
PLATO, Phaedrus
No evil can happen to a good man, neither in life nor after death.
PLATO, The Apology
For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates ... in the soul, and overflows from thence, as from the head into the eyes.
PLATO, Charmides
That's what education should be ... the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.
PLATO, The Republic
Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like.
PLATO, Lysis
There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.
PLATO, The Republic
God is not the author of all things, but of good only.
PLATO, The Republic
Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia.This vast power, gathered into one, endeavored to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits, and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind.
PLATO, Timaeus
If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful.
PLATO, Lysis
All knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom.
PLATO, Menexenus
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
For this ... is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body.
PLATO, Charmides
Friends have all things in common.
PLATO, Phaedrus
The good are like one another, and friends to one another; and ... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves, but are passionate and restless: and that which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing.
PLATO, Lysis
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
PLATO, Phaedo
There is great reason to hope that death is good; for one of two things -- either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man ... even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?
PLATO, The Apology
Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
PLATO, The Republic
The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and hope.
PLATO, The Republic
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.... This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
PLATO, The Republic
You cannot conceive the many without the one.
PLATO, Parmenides
Tools which would teach men their own use would be beyond price.
PLATO, The Republic
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
PLATO, Phaedo
