Poets Quotes by Plato

9 Poets quotes by Plato

Plato’s take on poets often sparks debate, and these nine snippets let you hear his voice without the surrounding dialogues. It’s a compact place to see how the ancient thinker weighed the role of poetry against reason and society.

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Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Plato

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The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets.

Plato

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They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom.

Plato

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Poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also…

Plato

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“I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners…

Plato

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For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out…

Plato

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For just as poets love their own works, and fathers their own children, in the same way those who have created a…

Plato

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Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they…

Plato

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And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not…

Plato

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Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

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You may be sure, dear Crito, that inaccurate language is not only in itself a mistake: it implants evil in men's souls.

Plato

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“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is…

Plato

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Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

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I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse.

Plato

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Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at…

Plato

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When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

Plato

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“The love of man to woman is a thing common and of course, and at first partakes more of instinct and passion than of…

Plato

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Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehood's school, and the one man that dares to…

Plato

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“He was a wise man who invented God.”

Plato

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For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm…

Plato

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“What shall we say about those spectators, then, who can see a plurality of beautiful things, but not beauty itself, and who are incapable…

Plato

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Geometry existed before creation.

Plato

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When men speak ill of thee, live so that nobody will believe them.

Plato

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We must, if we are to be consistent, and if we re to have a real pedigree herd, mate the best of our men…

Plato

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