Athenian men, I respect and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you.
apologyby socrates
Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.
My plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.
I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them.
Do you feel no compunction, at having followed a line of action which puts you in danger of the death penalty? I might fairly reply to him, You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action – that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one.
action / compunction / death / Life / worth
The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.
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. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know.
What is probable, gentlemen, is that in fact the god is wise and that his oracular response meant that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, and that when he says this man, Socrates, he is using my name as an example, as if he said: “This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless.”
So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: 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.
I do not know, men of Athens, how my accusers affected you; as for me, I was almost carried away in spite of myself, so persuasively did they speak. And yet, hardly anything of what they said is true.