Plato quotes on learning

SOCRATES: But just before you said that you did not know them by learning; now, if you have neither discovered nor learned them, how and whence do you come to know them? ALCIBIADES: I suppose that I was mistaken in saying that I knew them through my

And he who has the love of learning (Or, reading polumatheian, 'abundant learning.'), and is skilful in many arts, and does not possess the knowledge of the best, but is under some other guidance, will make, as he deserves, a sorry voyage:--he will, I believe, hurry through the brief space of human life, pilotless in mid-ocean, and the words will apply to him in which the poet blamed his enemy:-- '...Full many a thing he knew; But knew them all badly.' (A fragment from the pseudo-Homeric poem, 'Margites.') ALCIBIADES: How in the world, Socrates, do the words of the poet apply to him? They seem to me to have no bearing on the point whatever
Source: Plato, Alcibiades II

Yes, I said; and facility in learning is learning quickly, and difficulty in learning is learning quietly and slowly? True
Source: Plato, Charmides

SOCRATES: But how could he have learned or discovered things from names if the primitive names were not yet given? For, if we are correct in our view, the only way of learning and discovering things, is either to discover names for ourselves or to learn them from others
Source: Plato, Cratylus

And when you were learners you did not as yet know the things which you were learning? No, he said
Source: Plato, Euthydemus

Let me simply say that piety or holiness is learning how to please the gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices
Source: Plato, Euthyphro

SOCRATES: And is the 'having learned' the same as 'having believed,' and are learning and belief the same things? GORGIAS: In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same
Source: Plato, Gorgias

LACHES: I should not like to maintain, Nicias, that any kind of knowledge is not to be learned;

For example, in eating and drinking there is pleasure and also profit, that is to say, health; and in learning there is a pleasure and also truth
Source: Plato, Laws

'For in the ninth year Persephone sends the souls of those from whom she has received the penalty of ancient crime back again from beneath into the light of the sun above, and these are they who become noble kings and mighty men and great in wisdom and are called saintly heroes in after ages.' The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection
Source: Plato, Meno

But if the knowledge which we acquired before birth was lost by us at birth, and if afterwards by the use of the senses we recovered what we previously knew, will not the process which we call learning be a recovering of the knowledge which is natural to us, and may not this be rightly termed recollection? Very true
Source: Plato, Phaedo The Last Hours Of Socrates

This, as I was saying, is the way of considering and learning and teaching one another, which the gods have handed down to us
Source: Plato, Philebus

But then again, when I listen to your words, I waver; and am disposed to think that there must be something in what you say, because I know that you have great experience, and learning, and invention
Source: Plato, Protagoras

STRANGER: Next follows the whole class of learning and cognition; then comes trade, fighting, hunting
Source: Plato, Sophist

STRANGER: Suppose that the nurslings of Cronos, having this boundless leisure, and the power of holding intercourse, not only with men, but with the brute creation, had used all these advantages with a view to philosophy, conversing with the brutes as well as with one another, and learning of every nature which was gifted with any special power, and was able to contribute some special experience to the store of wisdom, there would be no difficulty in deciding that they would be a thousand times happier than the men of our own day
Source: Plato, Statesman

Behold, he said, the wisdom of Socrates; he refuses to teach himself, and goes about learning of others, to whom he never even says Thank you
Source: Plato, The Republic

Will you answer me a question: 'Is not learning growing wiser about that which you learn?' THEAETETUS: Of course
Source: Plato, Theaetetus

That there might be some visible measure of their relative swiftness and slowness as they proceeded in their eight courses, God lighted a fire, which we now call the sun, in the second from the earth of these orbits, that it might give light to the whole of heaven, and that the animals, as many as nature intended, might participate in number, learning arithmetic from the revolution of the same and the like
Source: Plato, Timaeus

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Source: Project Gutenburg Texts