SOCRATES: First, then, let us consider whether the doing of injustice exceeds the suffering in the consequent pain: Do the injurers suffer more than the injured? POLUS: No, Socrates; certainly not.
There’s no difficulty in choosing vice in abundance: the road is smooth and it’s hardly any distance to where it lives. But the gods have put sweat in the way of goodness, and a long, rough, steep road.
You’re not thinking straight, sir, if you think that a man who’s any use at all should give any opposing weight to the risk of living or dying, instead of looking to this alone whenever he does anything: whether his actions are just or unjust, the deeds of a good or bad man.
This early dialogue features the charismatic young politician Alcibiades in conversation with Socrates.
This is the truth of the matter, men of Athens: wherever a man has taken a position that he believes to be best, or has been placed by his commander, there he must I think remain and face danger, without a thought for death or anything else, rather than disgrace.
I was attached to this city by the god – though it seems a ridiculous thing to say – as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company.
You might easily be annoyed with me as people are when they are aroused from a doze, and strike out at me;.
I, on the other hand, have a convincing witness that I speak the truth, my poverty.
Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is, – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.
Having grasped this principle, it reverses itself and, keeping hold of what follow from it, comes down to a conclusion, making no use of anything visible at all, but only of forms themselves, moving on through forms to forms, and ending in forms.
O that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speaks the truth. For consider what a very commonplace and trivial things this which I have said – a thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same.
Then not he who does evil, but he who does good, is temperate? Yes, he said; and you, friend, would agree. No matter whether I should or not; just now, not what I think, but what you are saying, is the point at issue. Well, he answered; I mean to say, that he who does evil, and not good, is not temperate; and that he is temperate who does good, and not evil: for temperance I define in plain words to be the doing of good actions.
It looks, Socrates, as though I didn’t know what I was talking about then.
The unjust man enjoys life better than the just.” book 2.
Any man whom you see resenting death was not a lover of wisdom but a lover of the body.
Since there has been shown to be false speech and false opinion, there may be imitations of real existences, and out of this condition of the mind an art of deception may arise.
ION: Why, Socrates, the reason is, that my countrymen, the Ephesians, are the servants and soldiers of Athens, and do not need a general; and you and Sparta are not likely to have me, for you think that you have enough generals of your own.
SOCRATES: Then hear me, Gorgias, for I am quite sure that if there ever was a man who entered on the discussion of a matter from a pure love of knowing the truth, I am such a one, and I should say the same of you. GORGIAS: What is coming, Socrates?
People’s souls give up much more easily in hard study than in physical training, since the pain – being peculiar to them and not shared with their body – is more their own.
Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.