"There is ascension to potential that Plato couldn't conceive while prescribing idealism to conception as highest existences. With Streams, there isn't a difference between ideas and instantiations. They are both authenticated within all possibilities in Stream, within the Primal Cause as ordered. Ideas as ordered constructs in consciousness, instantiations as ordered effects.

Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand.

Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is.

The view that the truth is one and undivided, and the same for all men everywhere at all times, whether one finds it in the pronouncements of sacred books, traditional wisdom, the authority of churches, democratic majorities, observation and experiment conducted by qualified experts, or the convictions of simple folks uncorrupted by civilisation---this view, in one form or another, is central to western thought, which stems from Plato and his disciples.

[O]ther thinkers have philosophised since the time of Plato, but that does not destroy the interest and beauty of his philosophy

The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers...of all men to the extent they desire to know. But in fact, this includes only a few, the true friends, as Plato was to Aristotle at the very moment they were disagreeing about the nature of the good...They were absolutely one soul as they looked at the problem. This, according to Plato, is the only real friendship, the only real common good. It is here that the contact people so desperately seek is to be found...This is the meaning of the riddle of the improbable philosopher-kings. They have a true community that is exemplary for all other communities.

Plato claimed that we were all joined to someone else once, we were humans with four arms and four legs, and a head of two faces, but we were so powerful we threatened to topple the Gods. So they split us from our sole mates down the middle, and doomed us to live forever without our counterparts

The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

I hope it is not necessary for me to stress the platonic nature of our relationship- not platonic in the purest sense, there was no philosophical discourse, but we certainly didn't fuck, which is usually what people mean by platonic; which I bet would really piss Plato off, that for all his thinking and chatting his name has become an adjective for describing sexless trysts.

Plato was a bore.

Harry and Hermione are very platonic friends. But I won't answer for anyone else, nudge-nudge wink-wink!

"According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.

Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

Plato is dear to me but dearer still is truth.

I am a military police officer and I have served on two deployments my first was to Iraq in a medical unit and my second deployment was to Kuwait as a military police platoon leader.

I think as a rifle platoon and company commander your view is about 1 000 meters in front of you and you hope you can cover that ground and not have to back up and give it up again.

With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.

Walking is magic. Can't recommend it highly enough. I read that Plato and Aristotle did much of their brilliant thinking together while ambulating. The movement the meditation the health of the blood pumping and the rhythm of footsteps...this is a primal way to connect with one's deeper self.

We had times in '66 and '67 when we would pick up a platoon of privates out of the receiving barracks the week before we even graduated the platoon that we were on!

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

People instantly assume you can't have a platonic friendship with someone of the opposite sex. I think this may be specific to L.A. - or America.