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Plato Quotes on Friendship

Browse 6 quotations connecting Plato with Friendship, with meanings, source notes and related themes.

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Friendship, loyalty, value and harmony in Plato’s dialogues

Plato’s discussions of friendship do not resolve into a single slogan. In The Republic, Socrates challenges the proposal that justice means helping friends and injuring enemies; an appeal to friendship is not automatically a license to harm. In Phaedrus, Socrates describes the pledges and obligations of two lovers in one part of a larger mythological comparison of relationships. The dialogue Lysis asks directly what makes a friend: Socrates first values a real friend more than Darius’s riches, then explores whether friendship has an ultimate object valued for its own sake. Each tentative account is questioned, and the dialogue closes without an agreed definition. In Symposium, the physician Eryximachus connects benevolent love with harmony among people and the gods; his speech is one viewpoint among several at the banquet, not an empirically proven theory. The page distinguishes Socrates, Eryximachus and the original dramatic settings; it identifies Benjamin Jowett’s public-domain translations and links to the relevant dialogue texts. Readers should compare these differing arguments rather than assume every line is Plato speaking directly or a modern prescription for personal relationships.

Sources

Where these friendship quotations appear

Sources represented here include Lysis, Phaedrus, Symposium.

Lysis4th century BCE · 3 matching quotations Phaedrus4th century BCE · 1 matching quotation Symposium4th century BCE · 1 matching quotation The Republic4th century BCE · 1 matching quotation

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6 matching quotations with meanings and source context

Source identified1

And the truly dear or ultimate principle of friendship is not for the sake of any other or further dear.

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“And the truly dear or ultimate principle of friendship is not for the sake of any other or further dear.”

Lysis · 4th century BCE

Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates

Meaning & context

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.

Source details

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.

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Source identified2

Then love, and desire, and friendship would appear to be of the natural or congenial. Such, Lysis and Menexenus, is the inference.

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“Then love, and desire, and friendship would appear to be of the natural or congenial. Such, Lysis and Menexenus, is the inference.”

Lysis · 4th century BCE

Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates

Meaning & context

Socrates tentatively suggests that attachment may arise from an affinity between people, after reasoning about what desire lacks. He and his companions immediately test—and ultimately fail to settle—this proposal; the sentence is a provisional inference, not Plato’s final definition of love or friendship.

Source details

Lysis, around Stephanus 221e, Socrates addressing Lysis and Menexenus while exploring desire, affinity and friendship. Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1579. The dialogue goes on to challenge whether the congenial is simply the like and ends without reaching a settled definition; do not present the tentative argument as an unconditional fact.

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Source identified3

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.

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“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.”

Lysis · 4th century BCE

Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates

Meaning & context

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.

Source details

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.

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Source identified4

They consider that they have given and taken from each other the most sacred pledges, and they may not break them and fall into enmity.

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“They consider that they have given and taken from each other the most sacred pledges, and they may not break them and fall into enmity.”

Phaedrus · 4th century BCE

Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates

Meaning & context

Socrates depicts two lovers who regard their mutual promises as binding, even though their relationship follows the less philosophical path of his two possible outcomes. The line describes commitment within a particular ancient mythical account; it is not a free-standing promise that every relationship will remain harmonious.

Source details

Phaedrus, approximately Stephanus 256d–e, Socrates’s second speech contrasting the self-controlled philosophical lovers with another pair moved more by ambition and desire. Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1636. The sentence belongs to the second pair, NOT the ideal self-controlled pair, which matters to its meaning; these are a philosophical narrator’s words, not a romantic pledge made by Plato.

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Source identified5

And the love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another.

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“And the love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another.”

Symposium · 4th century BCE

Voice: Dialogue speaker · Eryximachus

Meaning & context

Eryximachus presents an expansive account in which well-ordered love creates harmony between people and even between humanity and the gods. His physician’s speech moves between medicine, music, the seasons and ritual, so friendship is part of an ancient analogy about the balance of opposing forces. It is his contribution to a gathering of competing speeches about love, not a single universally endorsed Platonic doctrine.

Source details

Plato, Symposium, Eryximachus speaking at approximately 188d–e near the end of his encomium of Eros; Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1600. The following exchange passes the speech to Aristophanes; speaker is physician Eryximachus, NOT Socrates. References to divine friendship and cosmology express ancient philosophical and religious views, not contemporary scientific findings.

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Source identified6

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?

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“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?”

The Republic · 4th century BCE

Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates

Meaning & context

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.

Source details

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.

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Friendship, loyalty, value and harmony in Plato’s dialogues

Where these friendship quotations appear

6 matching quotations with meanings and source context

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