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Plato

Life dates uncertain

Athenian philosophical writer whose dialogues ask readers to examine arguments and speakers. Supplied archive attributions remain distinct from the checked reading edition.

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Life and writing

Plato wrote philosophical discussions that give questions a setting and different speakers. Socrates often leads an exchange, but the literary speaker should not simply be identified with Plato or treated as a transcript of the historical Socrates. A sentence gains meaning from the objection, example or response around it. The reference gives an uncertain ancient birth year; this profile keeps the archive’s exact life dates unset.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Plato ↗ Introduction and sections 3–5: dialogue, speakers, Socrates and indirectness

The linked Republic is Benjamin Jowett’s English translation. Book II considers education and the importance of beginnings; Book V examines opinion in relation to knowledge and ignorance. Follow a complete exchange and ask who proposes the claim and how it is tested. These passages offer context for the selected themes without making a supplied shortened quotation an authenticated extract from this edition.

Project Gutenberg — The Republic ↗ PG1497: dialogue text, Book II on education; Book V on opinion and knowledge

Reading this voice

Begin with one exchange in Books II or V of The Republic, separating the dialogue from Jowett’s introductory analysis. The two selected contributor passages concern beginnings and opinion; their wording and source records remain unchanged. They are undated and independently unverified. A biography or related book cannot authenticate all 243 entries under this label or supply their composition dates. Precise life dates are not asserted here.

Subjects to explore

Editorial reading connections, distinct from the archive’s word matching.

A work to read

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Editorial starting points from this author’s existing entries.

Profile sources and editorial status

Original agent-assisted editorial profile, checked 2026-10-05. No human review is recorded. Life dates remain uncertain; no lifespan or quotation composition date is inferred.

Archive entries

24Undated
And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.
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