The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues

by Plato

I fancy that he must be a wise man, and seeing that I am anything but a wise man, he has found me out, and is going to accuse me of corrupting his young friends.

he says that I am a poet or maker of gods, and that I make new gods and deny the existence of old ones; this is the ground of his indictment.

For a man may be thought wise; but the Athenians, I suspect, do not care much about this, until he begins to make other men wise;

they soon enough discover, who think that they know something, but really know little or nothing;

I know that this plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth?—this

Happy indeed would be the condition of youth if they had one corruptor only, and all the rest of the world were their improvers.

teach them not to acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges, but some other new divinities

since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the state,