Plato

4th-century BCE Greek philosopher

Fame91.5
Momentum2.2
Global rank#43

Source-basedStable

Fame91.5
Momentum2.2
Global rank#43
Academics rank#6
Wikipedia232.8K

Lived -428–-348, aged 80

AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
220 languages
Cross-language footprint
Global rank
#43
Fame.am leaderboard
Era
-428–-348
Aged 80
Known for
Plato's Banquet
1989

Summary

Updated 2026-08-24

The philosopher who invented the dialogue form and built the scaffolding every Western thinker since has worked inside. His Theory of Forms tried to solve how we recognize a chair when no two chairs are identical—and 2,400 years later, we're still arguing about his answer.

Biography

About

Born around 428–423 BC in Classical Athens, Plato absorbed the pre-Socratic puzzles of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides before studying under Socrates. After his teacher's execution, he founded the Academy, where he taught what would become Platonism and trained Aristotle. His complete works survived when nearly every contemporary's vanished, read straight through antiquity and the Middle Ages, shaping Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thought through Neoplatonism. He died in 348 or 347 BC, leaving a body of work so encompassing that Alfred North Whitehead later called European philosophy "…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Plato

Plato

saidundated

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

— 435b

Plato

saidundated

No man of sense can put himself and his soul under the control of names... You must consider courageously and thoroughly and not accept anything carelessly.

— 440c–d

Plato

saidundated

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

— 155d, The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3, 1871, p. 377

Plato

saidundated

It is impossible that evils should be done away with, for there must always be something opposed to the good; and they… must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth.

— 176a–c

Plato

saidundated