Browse 13 quotations connecting Plato with Character, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
These thirteen passages from six independently composed dialogues approach character through the formation of habits, the refusal to injure others, and questions about how the soul should be governed. In The Republic, Socrates links the direction of early education to the way citizens will live, then contests Polemarchus’s proposal that justice permits harming enemies. Book IV’s question about reason guiding the spirited part of the soul belongs to a model of civic and personal order, not a tested account of modern psychology. In Crito, Socrates asks whether wrongdoing is still forbidden when he himself has been wronged and is considering escape from prison. That ethical test is more precise than a general slogan about having a good personality; the scene makes consistency under pressure the issue.
Five of these entries come from different books of Laws, but those books together constitute just one independent work. The Athenian Stranger proposes that guided play and early habits prepare children for civic virtue; his fuller Book II explanation links learned pleasures and dislikes with later reason. Book VII broadens the discussion to education of both mind and body. In Book V he instead addresses adults: carrying out one’s own admonitions matters more than repeatedly lecturing the young. His Book IX account calls it injustice when fear, anger, pleasure or desire dominate a life. Those are positions voiced within an imagined legal and educational order, not contemporary experimental findings about child development, health or brain structure. The Stranger is not Socrates, who does not appear in Laws.
The other dialogues complicate any tidy list of character traits. In Lysis, Socrates places the prospect of genuine friendship above Darius’s wealth and then tentatively explores whether friendship has some ultimate object valued for itself; his proposal is later questioned and the discussion finishes without a final definition. In Gorgias, Socrates calls mastery of pleasures and passions temperance, but Callicles immediately attacks that ideal and defends the expansion of desire. In Protagoras, Socrates asks whether justice, holiness and temperance are parts of a single virtue or merely different names for it; Protagoras’s comparison with the parts of a face is an answer under examination, not a settled moral taxonomy. Character is a useful reading lens for this collection, but several inherited tags concern education, friendship or abstract definitions of virtue indirectly. Read the named dramatic speaker, the original question and the linked work before treating any translated line as Plato’s personal command.
Sources represented here include Laws, The Republic, Lysis.
“Then we must do no wrong?”
The brief question tests whether the previously accepted principle against wrongdoing still holds when obedience to it becomes personally costly.
Crito, Benjamin Jowett translation; Socrates is testing the moral premises that will govern his decision about escaping prison.
“A simple thing enough; just what is commonly said, that a man should be temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions.”
Socrates describes moderation as governing one’s own appetite and impulses rather than merely exercising power over other people. Callicles immediately challenges this view and praises satisfying desires without restraint. The passage is an argument in a dispute about happiness and the good life, not modern evidence about psychology or a claim that feelings should be suppressed.
Plato, Gorgias, approximately Stephanus 491d–e, Socrates answering Callicles’s question about ruling oneself. Callicles promptly disputes the value of temperance. Full sentence in Benjamin Jowett’s English translation, Project Gutenberg #1672, within the Gorgias dialogue proper (not Jowett’s introductory essay). Socrates is the local dramatic speaker; the line is not Plato’s autobiographical speech. An ancient ethical argument, not experimental mental-health evidence.
“The most important part of education is right training in the nursery.”
The dialogue stresses that education begins through early habits and guided play, well before formal lessons. Its claim belongs to the plan for raising citizens in an imagined polity.
Laws, Book I, Benjamin Jowett English translation. The Athenian Stranger says this while explaining why childhood play and practical imitation should prepare future capacities; it is a program of civic upbringing, not a present-day evidence-based educational standard.
“Am I not right in maintaining that a good education is that which tends most to the improvement of mind and body?”
The speaker asks whether education should develop mental as well as bodily capacities. In the dialogue this opens a discussion of early nurture, training and the proposed legal order.
Laws, Book VII, Benjamin Jowett English translation. The Athenian Stranger asks Cleinias this question as they begin discussing how children should be raised; it is dialogue, not a detached modern prescription for health or schooling.
“Now I mean by education that training which is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children;”
In this account, education forms early habits of feeling and response so that they can later accord with reason. It is an account of moral formation within the dialogue, not an empirical generalization about childhood.
Laws, Book II, Benjamin Jowett English translation. The Athenian Stranger opens a longer definition linking early instincts and pleasure or pain with later rational understanding; this quotation preserves the opening clause and its original semicolon.
“When anger and fear, and pleasure and pain, and jealousies and desires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any harm or not—I call all this injustice.”
The Athenian Stranger defines injustice in terms of uncontrolled impulses ruling a person, even before judging the harmful consequences of a particular act. He is distinguishing a disordered character from the later task of classifying and punishing wrongdoing under civic law.
Laws, Book IX, the Athenian Stranger replying to Cleinias while designing criminal laws for an imagined city. Benjamin Jowett English translation, Project Gutenberg #1750. This is the concluding clause of a longer first-person definition that begins “And now I can define to you clearly”; preserving it as an extract does not make it a remark by Socrates (who is absent from Laws).
“The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own admonitions in practice.”
The Athenian Stranger argues that adults teach ethical habits through consistent conduct as much as through instruction. Within the proposed city’s civic code, self-discipline and example help to shape a life shared across generations; this is not a randomized modern study of parenting.
Plato, Laws, Book V, the Athenian Stranger giving an extended civic-ethical exhortation to Cleinias and Megillus; Benjamin Jowett English, Gutenberg #1750. This is dialogue speech, not commentary in Jowett’s introduction. The local dramatic voice is the Athenian Stranger, not Socrates or Plato personally.
“And the truly dear or ultimate principle of friendship is not for the sake of any other or further dear.”
Socrates examines whether some cherished thing can be valued for its own sake rather than only because it leads to another benefit. He advances a possible ultimate object of friendship, but the argument immediately faces further questions and the dialogue finishes without an agreed definition. Reading this as a tested hypothesis prevents the line from becoming a misleading slogan about ideal friendship.
Plato, Lysis, approximately 219c–d, Socrates speaking with Lysis and Menexenus; Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1579. The sentence follows a chain of examples of things desired for other things, and Socrates soon reopens the argument by asking whether friendship depends on evil. It is a provisional dialectical step, not a conclusive formula offered by Plato.
“Yea, by the dog of Egypt, I should greatly prefer a real friend to all the gold of Darius, or even to Darius himself: I am such a lover of friends as that.”
Socrates tells Menexenus that finding a genuine friend matters more to him than immense wealth or royal power. The comic oath and comparison with Darius are deliberately extravagant, leading into his admission that he does not yet know how friendship is formed. This is a dramatic statement of what he prizes, not a claim that money can never help relationships.
Plato, Lysis, around 211e–212a (opening inquiry into friendship), Socrates addressing Menexenus; Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1579, dramatic text after Menexenus rejoins the discussion. Gold of Darius is a historical royal-wealth comparison and Socrates goes on to question what it means to be a friend. Do not attribute this speech to Plato as personal autobiography.
“Now I want you to tell me truly whether virtue is one whole, of which justice and temperance and holiness are parts; or whether all these are only the names of one and the same thing: that is the doubt which still lingers in my mind.”
Socrates challenges Protagoras to clarify whether moral excellences such as justice, temperance and holiness make up different parts of a single virtue or name the same property. The question tests the structure of virtue rather than giving the reader an easy definition. Protagoras proposes an analogy with distinct parts of a face, and their discussion goes on to scrutinize the claim.
Plato, Protagoras, approximately Stephanus 329c–d; Socrates asks Protagoras about the unity of virtue after the sophist describes civic instruction and the acquisition of good character. Protagoras, not Socrates, answers that its qualities are distinct parts. Exact sentence from Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1591, in the dialogue proper after the opening philosophical and mythic arguments, not in translator commentary.
“The direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life.”
Early education shapes habits of attention and judgment, so its direction can influence the kind of person someone later becomes.
The Republic, Book IV in Benjamin Jowett’s translation; the line appears during discussion of education and civic character.
“Then to injure a friend or any one else is not the act of a just man, but of the opposite, who is the unjust?”
Socrates argues that deliberately harming another person cannot be a proper exercise of justice, including when someone calls the target an enemy. This challenges the earlier suggestion that a just person should help friends and hurt enemies.
The Republic, Book I, Socrates replying to Polemarchus in the examination of the maxim that justice helps friends and harms enemies. Benjamin Jowett English translation, Project Gutenberg #1497. The source presents a question in dialogue, not a standalone personal motto from Plato; the moral argument considers whether hurting someone can make that person better.
“And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to be the subject and ally?”
Socrates argues that self-government involves a rational faculty attending to the whole person while spirited impulses support its judgment. The passage is a question within his analogy between a well-ordered city and the three parts of the soul. It does not mean that all emotion should be suppressed or that Plato established a modern psychological theory.
Plato, The Republic, Book IV, approximately 441e–442a; Socrates addressing Glaucon while contrasting the rational, spirited and appetitive parts of the soul. Exact sentence from Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1497, Book IV main dialogue (not introductory editorial matter). The premise belongs to an ancient account of the soul and remains open to philosophical interpretation; not clinical or neuroscientific evidence.
