40 Thoughtful Plato Quotes On LOVE
Last Updated on January 30, 2023
Looking for some amazing Plato quotes on love? You’re at the best place.
Plato, who was a famous Greek philosopher and Socrates’s student, had a unique view of love.
He thought that love was a strong force that linked us to God and helped us reach our full potential. Plato’s quotes about love are still often used today, and they help us understand what love is and what role it plays in our lives.
Plato’s beliefs about the “Forms” or “Ideas” had a big impact on how he thought about love. He thought that everything in the world has a perfect version and that we can only really know love when we are connected to this perfect version.
Plato thought that love is not just an emotion, but also a spiritual connection that can help us go beyond the physical world and reach a higher level of understanding.
Plato Quotes On Love That Are Timeless
1. “Love is a serious mental disease.” – Plato
2. “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.” – Plato
3. “According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.” – Plato
4. “Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.” – Plato
5. “And I am the lover who goes not away, but remains with you, when you are no longer young and the rest are gone?” – ALCIBIADES I, PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE By Plato
6. “Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.” – THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO VOLUME I
7. “Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.” – The Symposium By Plato
8. “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.” – Plato
9. “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” – Plato
10. “…a lover, if he is worthy of the name, ought to show his love, not to some one part of that which he loves, but to the whole.” – BOOK V, THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO
11. “To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.” – Plato
12. “. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.” – THE SPEECH OF ARISTOPHANES, SYMPOSIUM By Plato
13. “Love is the pursuit of the whole.” – Plato
14. “Love’ is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.” – Plato
15. “He whom loves touches not walks in darkness.” – Plato
16. “what if the man could see Beauty Itself, pure, unalloyed, stripped of mortality, and all its pollution, stains, and vanities, unchanging, divine,…the man becoming in that communion, the friend of God, himself immortal;…would that be a life to disregard?” – Plato
Plato On Love
17. “…when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen – only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he’s in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.” – Plato
18. “And when one of them meets with his 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 would not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.” – RISTOPHANES’S SPEECH IN PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM
19. “The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.” – Plato
20. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” – Plato
21. “Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.” – Plato
22. “There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.” – Plato
23. “Love is a serious mental disease.” – Plato
24. “Then we may begin by assuming that there are three classes of men—lovers of wisdom, lovers of honour, lovers of gain?” – BOOK IX, THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO
25. “According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.” – Plato
26. “Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting.” – Plato
27. “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet” – Plato
28. “He feels particularly ashamed if ever he is seen by his lovers to be invovled in something dishonourable.” – Plato
29. “…each living creature is said to be alive and to be the same individual– as for example someone is said to be the same person from when he is a child until he comes to be an old man. And yet, if he’s called the same, that’s despite the fact that he’s never made up from the same things, but is always being renewed, and losing what he had before, whether it’s hair, or flesh, or bones, or blood, in fact the whole body. And don’t suppose that this is just true in the case of the body; in the case of the soul, too, its traits, habits, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears– none of these things is ever the same in any individual, but some are coming into existence, others passing away.” – Plato
30. “Nor when love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not being deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one’s “uses base” for the sake of money; but this is not honourable.” – Plato
31. “Human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the pursuit of the whole is called love.” – Plato
32. “Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise.” – Plato
33. “Yet whenever someone comes upon his very own half then they are wondrously struck with affection and intimacy and love, and are practically unwilling to be separated from one another even for a short time. And it is they who stay together for life, and who wouldn’t be able to say what they want to get for themselves from one another.” – Plato
34. “For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this.” – Plato
35. “Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed.” – Plato
36. “love,’ she said, ‘may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good?” – Plato, Symposium
37. “…for the interests of rulers require that their subjects should be poor in spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by experience; for… [love] had a strength which undid their power…” – Plato
38. “Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends.” – Plato
39. “And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it’s to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don’t want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.” – Plato
40. “If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.” – Plato
FAQs
Who is Plato?
Socrates taught Plato, who became a well-known Greek philosopher. He is known for his work in metaphysics, epistemology, and political theory. He is thought to be one of the most important figures in Western philosophy.
What Were Plato’s Views on Love?
Plato thought that love is a strong force that brings us closer to God and helps us reach our full potential. He thought that we can only really know love when we are connected to the perfect version of something, and that love is a spiritual connection.
Are Plato’s Quotes on Love Relevant Today?
Yes, many people still use Plato’s words about love today. They give us timeless ideas about what love is and what role it plays in our lives, and they can be just as important today as they were thousands of years ago.
