Aristotle's Life

Aristotle, one of Plato's greatest students, was born in 384 BC. Aristotle's father was a physician to the king of Mecadonia, and when Aristotle was seven years old, his father sent him to study at the Academy. He was there at the beginning as a student, then became a researcher and finally a teacher. He seemed to adopted and developed Platonic ideas while there and to have expressed them in dialogue form. When Plato died, Plato willed the Academy not to Aristotle, but to his nephew Speusippus. Aristotle then left Athens with Xenocrates to go to Assos, in Asia Minor, where he opened a branch of the Academy. This Academy focused more on biology than its predecessor that relied on mathematics.

There he met Hermias, another former student of Plato, who had become king of Assos. Aristotle married Hermias niece, Pythias, who died ten years later. During these years in Assos, Aristotle started to break away from Platonism and developed his own ideas.

King Philip of Macedonia invited Aristotle to the capitol around 343 BC to tutor his thirteen-ear-old don, Alexander. Tutoring Alexander in the Academy in Assos, Aristotle still remained the president of the Academy. In 359 BC, Alexander's father, King Philip decided to set off to subdue the Greek city-states, and left Alexander in charge, thus stopping Aristotle's tutoring of Alexander.

King Philip was then murdered, in 336 BC, and Alexander then became king. He mobilized his father's great army and subdued some city-states, thus becoming "Alexander The Great".

In 335 BC, Aristotle returned to Athens. Speusippus had died, but Aristotle was again not given the presidency of the Academy in Athens, instead, it was given to one of his colleagues Xenocrates. So, Aristotle founded his own school this time, it was named the Lyceum, named after Apollo Lyceus. In 323 BC, twelve years after founding the Lyceum, Alexander the Great died. In Greece resentment against the Macedonia hegemony seethed and riots broke out. Aristotle was accused of impiety, and his life become in serious jeopardy. So he left Athens, and went to his late mother's estate at Chalcis on the island of Euboea. He died there in the next year, 322 BC.

Plato's Life

Plato, born in Athens around 427 BC, was considered to be one of the earliest philosophers. He lived during the Age of Synthesis. After his father's death his mother married a friend of Pericles so he was politically connected to both the oligarchy and democracy. After the Peloponnesian War, his mother's brother and uncle tried to persuade him to join in the oligarchical rules of Athens. Instead, Plato joined his two older brothers in becoming a student of Socrates. Socrates forced them to challenge then to examine their ideas and beliefs critically, which was annoying and antagonizing many in the process. Socrates seems to have adopted as his own the motto of the Delphic Oracle, "Know thyself"; and, while trying to dissociate himself from the sophists' brand of instruction for hire, he taught his students that, "it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living."

Plato was an opponent of the relativism and scepticism of the Sophists; but, like them he focused on values rather than on physical science. Aristotle credits Socrates with emphasizing moral questions and precise definitions; and Plato surely absorbed these lessons.

Plato was no friend of the Thirty Tyrants, who's reign (404-403 BC) lasted only 8 months, but he also was not a friend of the Athenian democracy when it was restored. He alienated them by him method of critical interrogation. In 399 BC he was brought to trial with the capital crimes of religious impiety and corruption of youth, convicted, and sentenced to death. Hid friends offered to pay a fine instead of the death penalty. As Plato tells us in the Seventh Letter after Socrates' death, he became disenchanted with all existing political regimes, and felt that the only salvation of politics would require that "either true and genuine philosophers attain political power or the rulers of states by some dispensation of providence become genuine philosophers."

About 387 BC, Plato founded a school in Athens, in a grove sacred to the demigod Academus, called the Academy (which is where we get the word academics from today). It was, in effect, a university of higher learning, which included physical science, astronomy, and mathematics, as well as philosophy. In addition to presiding over the Academy, Plato delivered lectures, which were never published.

In 367 BC Dionysius died and was succeeded by his teenage son, Dionysius II, whose uncle, Dion, was a close friend to Plato. Dion invited Plato to come a school Dionysius for his future kingship. Plato, seeing that this was a way for him to complete his goal for a philosopher king decided to travel to Sicily and take control of the boy's studies. Dionysius II later had a fight with Dion, and exiled him, Plato was unable to convert the boy to philosophy and returned the Athens, where Dion had established residence. Plato continued correspondence with Dionysius II, and tried to have him reconcile with Dion. Dionysius II lured Plato into a trap, by telling him that he wanted to become a philosopher. Plato was trapped in Syracuse until 360. Where he traveled back to Athens and continued to function as president of the Academy. He died in 347 BC, at about the age of eighty.

Socrates’ Life

A philosopher of Athens, generally regarded as one of the wisest people of all time. It is not known who his teachers were, but he seems to have been acquainted with the doctrines of PARMENIDES, HERACLITUS, and ANAXAGORAS. Socrates himself left no writings, and most of our knowledge of him and his teachings comes from the dialogues of his most famous pupil, PLATO, and from the memoirs of XENOPHON. Socrates is described as having neglected his own affairs, instead spending his time discussing virtue, justice, and piety wherever his fellow citizens congregated, seeking wisdom about right conduct so that he might guide the moral and intellectual improvement of Athens. Using a method now known as the Socratic dialogue, or dialectic, he drew forth knowledge from his students by pursuing a series of questions and examining the implications of their answers. Socrates equated virtue with the knowledge of one's true self, holding that no one knowingly does wrong. He looked upon the soul as the seat of both waking consciousness and moral character, and held the universe to be purposively mind-ordered. His criticism of the Sophists and of Athenian political and religious institutions made him many enemies, and his position was burlesqued by ARISTOPHANES. In 399 B.C. Socrates was tried for corrupting the morals of Athenian youth and for religious heresies; it is now believed that his arrest stemmed in particular from his influence on Alcibiades and Critias, who had betrayed Athens. He was convicted and, resisting all efforts to save his life, willingly drank the cup of poison hemlock given him. The trial and death of Socrates are described by Plato in the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo.

Plato’s Quotes “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” 

― Plato “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

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” ― Plato

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imaginationand life to everything.” ― Plato

“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

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” ― Plato

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” ― Plato

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” ― Plato

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.” ― Plato, The Republic

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ― Plato

“Love is a serious mental disease.” ― Plato, Phaedrus

“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” ― Plato

“Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” ― Plato

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws” ― Plato

“There is truth in wine and children” ― Plato, Symposium/Phaedrus

“I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.” ― Plato

“Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.” ― Plato

“The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings” ― Plato

Socrates’ Quotes “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” 

― Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living.” 

― Socrates “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” 

― Socrates “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” 

― Socrates “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” 

― Socrates “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” 

― Socrates “To find yourself, think for yourself.” 

― Socrates “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad

one, you’ll become a philosopher.” ― Socrates

“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.” ― Socrates

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” ― Socrates

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” ― Socrates

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” ― Socrates

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.” ― Socrates

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” ― Socrates

“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.” ― Socrates

“Know thyself.” ― Socrates

“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.” ― Socrates

“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.” ― Socrates

Aristotle’s Quotes

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ― Aristotle

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” ― Aristotle

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ― Aristotle, Metaphysics

“Hope is a waking dream.” ― Aristotle

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” ― Aristotle

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.” ― Aristotle

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” ― Aristotle

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” ― Aristotle

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” ― Aristotle

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.” ― Aristotle

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” ― Aristotle

“To perceive is to suffer.” ― Aristotle

“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.” ― Aristotle

“A friend to all is a friend to none.” ― Aristotle

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” ― Aristotle

“Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.” ― Aristotle

“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” ― Aristotle

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” ― Aristotle

“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.” ― Aristotle