Quotes About Socrates

death is nothing to fear in itself, or Socrates would have run from it.

has any of you such power as Socrates had, in all his intercourse with men, of winning them over to his own convictions?

The man has to learn 'what each specific thing means', as Socrates often said, and stop casually applying preconceptions to individual cases.

In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social.

It's been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an understanding of nature's order which was as yet unknown. Now it's time to further an understanding of nature's order by reassimilating those passions which were originally fled from.

All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat.

Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval. That

Socrates The philosopher offered us a way out of two powerful delusions: that we should always or never listen to the dictates of public opinion. To follow his example, we will best be rewarded if we strive instead to listen to the dictates of reason

Easter? Our attention falls more on dying than on death. How we deal with dying is more important to us than how we conquer death. Socrates overcame dying; Christ overcame death.

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, "I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.

The words of Plato in the third book of the Republic are as follows: " Truth, said Socrates, is to be specially cultivated.

Another syllogism. All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat.

Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, Socrates considered the government to be an aristocracy.

Socrates's daimon (the one who spoke first within him ) whispered to him: no. My daimon, on the contrary, is my stupidity: like the Nietzschean ass, I say yes to everything, in the field of my love.

Young Socrates, who is not shocked by what the stranger says about killing and banishing, is rather shocked by the suggestion that rule without laws (absolute rule) can be legitimate. To understand fully the response of young Socrates, one must pay attention to the fact that the stranger does not make a distinction between human laws and natural laws.

The soul cannot be immortal if it is composed of many things unless the composition is most perfect. But the soul as we know it from our experience lacks that perfect harmony. In order to find the truth, one would have to recover by reasoning the original or true nature of the soul. This reasoning is not achieved in the Republic . That is to say, Socrates proves the immortality of the soul without having brought to light the nature of the soul.

The final allegation of the accuser states that Socrates made a mischievous use of certain passages in the most highly reputed poets, interpreting, for example, a line from Hesiod to mean that one should abstain from no unjust or shameful deed but do even such things for the sake of gain. Xenophon's response speaks of Socrates' standard as the beneficial or the good; it says nothing about his views on the noble and just.

In fact, classification, the separating of things into classes or kinds, underlies our speech, our capacity to speak. According to Socrates, "conversing" ( to dialegesthai ) was given its name from the practice of those who come together to deliberate in common by separating ( to dialegein ) matters according to their kinds.

In this connection it should be mentioned that in describing the regimes, Socrates does not speak of "ideologies" belonging to them; he is concerned with the character of each kind of regime and with the end which it manifestly and explicitly pursues, as well as with the political justification of the end in question in contradistinction to any transpolitical justification stemming from cosmology, theology, metaphysics, philosophy of history, myth, and the like.

Plato writes as if the Athenian democracy had not carried out Socrates' execution, and Socrates speaks as if the Athenian democracy had not engaged in an orgy of bloody persecution of guilty and innocent alike when the Hermes statues were mutilated at the beginning of the Sicilian expedition.

Certain it is that Socrates makes very radical proposals of "reform" without encountering serious resistance. But there are also a few indications in the Republic to the effect that the longed-for reformation is not likely to succeed on the political plane or that the only possible reformation is that of the individual man.

Socrates had no system to teach. Throughout, his philosophy was a spiritual exercise, an invitation to a new way of life, active reflection, and living consciousness.

It is the greatest good for an individual to discuss virtue (aka areté) every day...for the unexamined life is not worth living.

Such as thy words are, such will thy affections be esteemed; and such will thy deeds be as thy affections and such thy life as thy deeds.