Ancient Greek Philosophers

The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture.

At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one’s education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance, or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died.

—Plato

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

—Plato

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

—Plato

Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.

—Plato

The right question is usually more important than the right answer.

—Plato

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

—Plato

We do not act rightly because we are excellent, in fact we achieve excellence by acting rightly.

—Plato

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

—Plato

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

—Plato

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.

—Plato

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

—Plato

Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.

—Plato

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent.

Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

—Socrates

Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice.

We do not act rightly because we are excellent, in fact we achieve excellence by acting rightly!

—Plato

Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.

—Plato

Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle.

—Socrates

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

—Socrates

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

—Plato

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity.

Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together.

With these means, man can attain perfection.

—Plato

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

—Plato

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

—Plato

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

—Socrates

If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.

—Socrates

The one who learns and learns and doesn’t practice is like the one who plows and plows and never plants.

—Plato

Apply yourself both now and in the next life.

Without effort, you cannot be prosperous.

Though the land be good, you cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

—Plato

Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.

—Plato

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

—Socrates

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

—Plato

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

—Socrates

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul?

Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

—Plato