Plato Quotes on Knowledge
Plato's epistemology centers on the doctrine that genuine knowledge (epistēmē) is of the eternal Forms — unchanging intelligible realities — while mere opinion (doxa) is of the shifting sensible world. The Theaetetus opens the Western analysis of knowledge with the question 'what is knowledge?' and works through three proposals — knowledge as perception, as true belief, as true belief with an account — without endorsing any. The Republic's allegory of the cave and the divided line frame the ascent from sensory illusion through mathematical reasoning to the direct intellectual grasp of the Forms, with the Form of the Good as the ultimate object of philosophical understanding.
Quotes
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Attributed to Plato:
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
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“Philosophy begins in wonder.”
155d, The Dialogues of Plato , Volume 3, 1871, p. 377 -
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.”
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Attributed to Plato:
“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.”
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Attributed to Plato:
“Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.”
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Attributed to Plato:
“Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil.”
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“I shall assume that your silence gives consent .”
435b -
“If the very essence of knowledge changes, at the moment of the change to another essence of knowledge there would be no knowledge, and if it is always changing, there will always be no knowledge, and by this reasoning there will be neither anyone to know nor anything to be known. But if there is always that which knows and that which is known —if the beautiful, the good, and all the other verities exist— I do not see how there is any likeness between these conditions of which I am now speaking and flux or motion.”
440a–b -
“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”
155d, The Dialogues of Plato , Volume 3, 1871, p. 377 -
“Perception and knowledge could never be the same.”
186e -
“Neither perception nor true opinion, nor reason or explanation combined with true opinion could be knowledge… Then our art of midwifery declare to us that all the offspring that have been born are mere wind-eggs and not worth rearing… and if you remain barren, you will be less harsh and gentler to your associates, for you will have the wisdom not to think you know that which you do not know.”
210a-c -
“I do see one large and grievous kind of ignorance, separate from the rest, and as weighty as all the other parts put together. Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us.”
229c