....I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia–by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best.(tr Jowett)

Plato
About This Quote

I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best.(tr Jowett) In this quote from a letter, the author of the letter tells of a group of friends who aroused his interest. He goes on to say that they were bored and that he would have left them along with their ideas about what was best. This is a huge statement of independence because, had they allowed themselves to be controlled by their ideas, they might not have been able to get anything done at all. Instead, using his imagination and energy, he was able to do so much more than he ever could have dreamed.

Source: Phaedo

Some Similar Quotes
  1. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. - Elie Wiesel
  2. Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We... - Haruki Murakami
  3. The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace. - Mahatma Gandhi
  4. 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. - Milan Kundera
  5. It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters, - Amit Ray
More Quotes By Plato
  1. Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
  2. Love is a serious mental disease.
  3. ...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be...
  4. You're my Star, a stargazer too, and I wish that I were Heaven, with a billion eyes to look at you!
  5. Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.
Related Topics