Plato Quotes on God
Plato's theology is dispersed across the dialogues rather than presented systematically. The Republic places the Form of the Good — the source of being and intelligibility for all the other Forms — at the apex of the philosophical ascent described in the allegories of the cave and the divided line. The Timaeus presents the demiurge, a divine craftsman who fashions the visible cosmos by looking to the eternal Forms as paradigms; the Laws develops a more conventional theology of intelligent cosmic order. The later Platonist tradition through Plotinus, Proclus, and Augustine systematized these scattered materials into the philosophical theology that shaped late antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages.
Quotes
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“Some say that the body is the " tomb " of the soul , their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life ; and again, because by its means the soul gives any signs which it gives, it is for this reason also properly called "sign". But I think it most likely that the Orphic poets gave this name, with the idea that the soul is undergoing punishment for something; they think it has the body as an enclosure to keep it safe, like a prison, and this is, as the name itself denotes, the "safe" for the soul, until the penalty is paid, and not even a letter needs to be changed.”
400b–c -
“No man of sense can put himself and his soul under the control of names... You must consider courageously and thoroughly and not accept anything carelessly.”
440c–d -
“It is impossible that evils should be done away with, for there must always be something opposed to the good; and they… must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth. Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible… God is in no wise and in no manner unrighteous, but utterly and perfectly righteous, and there is nothing so like him as that one of us who in turn becomes most nearly perfect in righteousness.”
176a–c -
“Those who purge the soul believe that the soul can receive no benefit from any teachings offered to it until someone by cross-questioning reduces him who is cross-questioned to an attitude of modesty, by removing the opinions that obstruct the teachings, and thus purges him and makes him think that he knows only what he knows, and no more.”
230c-d