Famous Plato Quotes Explained
Plato was an Athenian philosopher and the founder of the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Plato's most-circulated lines are spoken by Socrates in the dialogues, but they carry weight that often outruns their original context. Below are eight, with notes on what they actually argue.
“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
The beginning in every task is the chief thing.
What it means
From the Republic, Book II. Socrates argues, against Adeimantus, that early education shapes the soul in ways later instruction cannot undo. The principle is general but Plato's immediate concern is the regulation of the stories told to children in the ideal city.
Attributed to Plato:
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
What it means
A paraphrase of an argument in the Republic, Book II, where Socrates explains that the city arises because no individual is self-sufficient. The popular wording does not appear in Plato verbatim; it entered English through sixteenth- and seventeenth-century proverb collections.
“Philosophy begins in wonder.”
155d, The Dialogues of Plato , Volume 3, 1871, p. 377
What it means
Spoken by Socrates in the Theaetetus. The Greek term thaumazein covers both wonder and perplexity — the experience of finding the ordinary suddenly strange. Aristotle picks up the same claim in Metaphysics Book I, securing it as a near-universal premise of ancient and medieval philosophy.
Attributed to Plato:
“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, cities will never have rest from their evils.”
What it means
From the Republic, Book V. Socrates' notorious thesis is that no city can be just unless political power and philosophical understanding are united in the same persons. Plato presents the claim as a deliberate provocation; whether he meant it as a political programme or as a thought experiment about justice is debated.
Attributed to Plato:
“Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.”
What it means
From the Republic, Book IV. Plato's account of justice is that each part of the city — and each part of the soul — performs its proper function and does not encroach on the others. The line sounds like a defence of non-interference but is the opposite: it is a strong claim that one's "own business" is fixed by one's natural role.
Attributed to Plato:
“Death is not the worst that can happen to men.”
What it means
The substance of Socrates' argument in the Apology at his trial. Socrates contends that fearing death is a form of pretending to know what one does not — whether death is actually bad. He prefers an examined death to an unexamined life.
Attributed to Plato:
“Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.”
What it means
From the Crito. Socrates, refusing to escape his death sentence, tells Crito that the question is never simply whether to live but whether to live well, which means justly. The line establishes the priority of ethics over mere self-preservation that runs through Plato's Socratic dialogues.
Attributed to Plato:
“Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil.”
What it means
The Socratic doctrine, expressed most directly in the Protagoras and the Meno. Plato's Socrates holds that no one knowingly does wrong: every vicious act traces back to a mistaken belief about what is genuinely good. The position contradicts later Christian and modern views of the will as capable of choosing evil while seeing it as evil.