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

“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

“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

“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 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

“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

“Only the body and its desires cause war, civil discord, and battles, for all wars are due to the desire to acquire wealth, and it is the body and the care of it, to which [d] we are enslaved, which compel us to acquire wealth, and all this makes us too busy to practice philosophy.”
― 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

“If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“In speaking of divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and true and loving, the author of order and not of disorder, of good and not of evil. Or rather, that he is justice, that he is truth, that he is love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were speaking; and that wherever these qualities are present, whether in the human soul or in the order of nature, there is God.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“The memory of a great man, so far from being immortal, is really limited to his own generation:—so long as his friends or his disciples are alive, so long as his books continue to be read, so long as his political or military successes fill a page in the history of his country. The praises which are bestowed upon him at his death hardly last longer than the flowers which are strewed upon his coffin or the 'immortelles' which are laid upon his tomb.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem to me both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very like the flat torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him and touch him, as you have now torpified me, I think. For my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons—and very good ones they were, as I thought—at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is. And I think that you are very wise in not voyaging and going away from home, for if you did in other places as you do in Athens, you would be cast into prison as a magician.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem to me both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very like the flat torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him and touch him, as you have now torpified me, I think. For my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons—and very good ones”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“SOCRATES: Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the danger; and therefore we ought to consider whether I shall or shall not do as you say.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Before he was condemned they had often held discussions, in which they agreed that no man should either do evil, or return evil for evil, or betray the right.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they will be more inconsiderate with you, and you will be more offended at them. If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure to the judges who have condemned me.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“The idealization of the sufferer is carried still further in the “Georgias”, in which the thesis is maintained, that “to suffer is better than to do evil;”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“the lover of inquiry must follow his beloved wherever it may lead him.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Eutyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Socrates: So too, if he asked you what color is, and you said it is white, and your questioner interrupted you, “Is white color or a color?” you would say that it is a color, because there are also other colors? — I would.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Socrates: One should never do wrong in return, nor do any man harm, no matter what he may have done to you.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

“Socrates: Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.”
― Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo