Gemistus Pletho Quotes on Knowledge
George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1355–1452), the late-Byzantine Platonist whose attendance at the 1438–39 Council of Florence brought a programmatic defense of Plato over Aristotle into the orbit of Cosimo de' Medici and supplied the philosophical impetus for the founding of the Florentine Platonic Academy under Marsilio Ficino, gave the late-medieval Greek philosophical world its most ambitious revival of pagan Hellenic thought. The Differences of Aristotle and Plato (1439) presses the case for the philosophical superiority of the Platonic tradition, and the posthumously circulated Book of Laws outlines a comprehensive religious and political reorganization of Greek society around recovered Hellenic principles — a project so radical that the Patriarch Gennadios Scholarios had the manuscript burned.
Quotes
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Attributed to Gemistus Pletho:
“Plato should be set above Aristotle; the master is greater than the pupil.”
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Attributed to Gemistus Pletho:
“A people that has lost its philosophical memory has lost the means of its political renewal.”
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Attributed to Gemistus Pletho:
“Constantinople may yet be saved by the same wisdom by which Athens once was great.”
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“Ἐσμὲν γὰρ οὖν... Ἕλληνες τὸ γένος, ὡς ἥ τε φωνὴ καὶ ἡ πάτριος παιδεία μαρτυρεῖ.”
We are Hellenes by race and culture. | Steven Runciman , The Great Church in Captivity (Cambridge UP, 1968) p. 122. Dieter Reinsch , "Η θεώρηση της πολιτικής και πολιτιστικής φυσιογνωμίας των Ελλήνων στους ιστορικούς της Άλωσης", in Études Balkaniques , Vol. 6: Byzance et l'hellénisme: l'identité grecque au Moyen Âge (Association Pierre Belon, 1999) p. 74 -
“We are Hellenes by race and culture.”
Ἐσμὲν γὰρ οὖν... Ἕλληνες τὸ γένος, ὡς ἥ τε φωνὴ καὶ ἡ πάτριος παιδεία μαρτυρεῖ. -
“Steven Runciman , The Great Church in Captivity (Cambridge UP, 1968) p. 122. Dieter Reinsch , "Η θεώρηση της πολιτικής και πολιτιστικής φυσιογνωμίας των Ελλήνων στους ιστορικούς της Άλωσης", in Études Balkaniques , Vol. 6: Byzance et l'hellénisme: l'identité grecque au Moyen Âge (Association Pierre Belon, 1999) p. 74”
Ἐσμὲν γὰρ οὖν... Ἕλληνες τὸ γένος, ὡς ἥ τε φωνὴ καὶ ἡ πάτριος παιδεία μαρτυρεῖ.