Five Dialogues Quotes

“I am better off than he is,—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues

“There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth?”
― Plato, Five Dialogues

“Virtue is the desire of things honorable and the power of attaining them.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues

“Imagine not being able to distinguish the real cause from that without which the cause would not be able to act as a cause.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“We should not become misologues, as people become misanthropes. There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable
discourse. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound, and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him to be wicked and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has
frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed to be one’s closest friends, then, in the end, after many such blows, one comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any
way at all.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“We should not then think so much of what the majority will say about us, but what he will say who understands justice and injustice, the one, that is, and the truth itself.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“if one of us, or someone else, merely {12} says that something is so, do we accept that it is so? Or should we examine what the speaker means?”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“I shall never fear or avoid things of which I do not know, whether they may not be good rather than things that [c]{34} I know to be bad.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“but I would contend at all costs in both word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not [c] know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“SOCRATES: It is not being seen because it is a thing seen but on the contrary it is a thing seen because it is being seen; nor is it because it is something led that it is being led but because it is being led that it is something led; nor is something being carried because it is something carried, but it is something carried because it is being carried. Is what [c] I want to say clear, Euthyphro?”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking? Now this is the most difficult point on which to convince some of you.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“He cannot search for what he knows — since he knows it, there is no need to search — nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what there is to look for.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Would that the majority could inflict the greatest evils, for they would then be capable of the greatest good, and that would be fine, but now they cannot do either. They cannot make a man either wise or foolish, but they inflict things haphazardly.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“now that the soul appears to be immortal, [d]there is no escape from evil or salvation for it except by becoming as good and wise as possible,”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“I am in danger at this moment of not having a philosophical attitude about this, but like those who are quite uneducated, I am eager to get the better of you in argument, for the uneducated, when they engage in argument about anything, give no thought to the truth about the subject of discussion but are only eager that those present will accept the position they have set forth.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Eutyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“wealth and the like, are at times good and at times harmful. Just as for the rest of the soul the direction of wisdom makes things beneficial, but harmful if directed by folly,”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Eutyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“...unless there is someone among our statesmen who can make another into a statesmen. If there were one, he could be said to be among the living as Homer said Tiresias was among the dead, namely, that "he alone retained his wits while the others flitted about like shadows." In the same manner such a man would, as far is virtue is concerned, here also be the only true reality compares, as it were, with the shadows.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“It is not difficult to avoid death, [b]gentlemen; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Eutyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his {33} actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Eutyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“of philosophy, to him a moral as well as an intellectual pursuit. Hence his celebrated paradox that virtue is knowledge and that when men do wrong, it is only because they do not know any better. We are often told that in this theory Socrates ignored the will, but that is in part a misconception. The aim is not to choose the right but to become the sort of person who cannot choose the wrong and who no longer has {x} any choice in the matter. This is what he sometimes expresses as becoming like a god, for the gods, as he puts it in Euthyphro (10d), love the pious (and so, the right) because it is right; they cannot do otherwise and no longer have any choice at all, and they cannot be the cause of evil.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“So, Euthyphro, piety then, should be regarded as a reciprocal exchange between Gods and humans.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“I am on the brink of death, while you will carry on living. The judgment of which is truly better rests only within the knowledge of God.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Then I showed again, not in words but in action, that, if it were not rather vulgar to [d]say so, death is something I couldn’t care less about, but that my whole concern is not to do anything unjust or impious.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“I, on the other hand, have a convincing witness that I speak the truth, my poverty.”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“You might easily be annoyed with me as people are when they are aroused from a doze, and strike out at me;”
― Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo