#socrates

"Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?"

"God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us."

"Question for your life: If Socrates had a clone, would he advise that clone to know thy self, or to know myself, with myself in this case being himself?"

"The most intriguing people you will encounter in this life are the people who had insights about you, that you didn't know about yourself."

"For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles."

"There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent."

"Socrates should have written comics."

"Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?"

"Do not trouble about those who practice philosophy, whether they are good or bad; but examine the thing itself well and carefully. And if philosophy appears a bad thing to you, turn every man from it, not only your sons; but if it appears to you such as I think it to be, take courage, pursue it, and practice it, as the saying is, 'both you and your house."

"He was just a kid. He didn’t care. He was like, “I’m getting in my mom’s van and I’m going home.” I was just a kid, too. But I cared. With him gone, who was I going to play Plato and Socrates with?"

"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have."