Socrate citations (179 citations, Page 4)

Socrate: 179 citations 0 J'aime

Socrate citations célèbres

“Il y a des hommes qui peuvent plus facilement compter leurs moutons que savoir qui sont leurs amis.”

Socrate

Autres citations rapportées

“Lorsque les communications étaient coupées en quelque point, ce qui arrive en campagne, et que nous devions rester sans manger, nul autre ne le valait en endurance pour supporter cette épreuve. En revanche, quand nous étions bien ravitaillés, il n'avait pas son pareil pour en profiter, notamment pour boire. Il n'y était pas porté, mais, si on le forçait, il buvait plus que tout le monde, et le plus étonnant, c'est que personne n'a vu Socrate ivre.”

Socrate

Éloge de Socrate par Alcibiade ivre ; à propos du comportement de Socrate soldat pendant l'expédition de Potidée.
grc

“Mais, pour autant que la lutte était dirigée contre l'esprit dionysien de l'art antérieur, nous reconnaissons en Socrate l'adversaire de Dionysos, le nouvel Orphée qui se lève contre Dionysos et, quoique certain d'être déchiré par les Ménades du tribunal athénien, force cependant le dieu tout-puissant à prendre la fuite; et celui-ci, comme au temps qu'il fuyait devant le roi d'Édonide Lycurgue, se réfugia dans les profondeurs de la mer, c'est-à-dire sous les flots mystiques d'un culte secret qui devait peu à peu envahir le monde entier.”

Socrate

de
Le socratisme comme conception opposée au dionysisme de la tragédie grecque. Nietzsche fait allusion au poète Orphée mort démembré par les Ménades adoratrices de Dionysos.

“Je me faisais du moins, tout en m'en allant, ces réflexions : « Voilà un homme qui est moins sage que moi. Il est possible en effet que nous ne sachions, ni l'autre, rien de beau ni de bon. Mais lui, il croit qu'il en sait, alors qu'il n'en sait pas, tandis que moi, tout de même que, en fait, je ne sais pas, pas davantage je ne crois que je sais! J'ai l'air, en tout cas, d'être plus sage que celui-là, au moins sur un petit point, celui-ci précisément : que ce que je ne savais pas, je ne croyais pas non plus le savoir! »”

Socrate

grc
Apologie de Socrate, 21d. Socrate vérifie l'oracle de Delphes (qui avait déclaré que nul n'était plus sage que Socrate) en interrogeant un homme politique.
Chez Platon

“Je maintiens donc que Socrate est on ne peut plus pareil à ces silènes qui se dressent dans les ateliers de sculpteurs, et que les artisans représentent avec un syrinx ou un aulos à la main; si on les ouvre par le milieu, on s'aperçoit qu'ils contiennent en leur intérieur des figurines de dieux.”

Socrate

grc
Éloge de Socrate par Alcibiade ivre. La comparaison avec les silènes revient plusieurs fois dans la suite de ses propos. Les discours de Socrate sont eux-mêmes comparés aux statuettes de silènes en 221d et suivants.

“On a souvent comparé Socrate et Jésus. Entre autres analogies, il est bien vrai qu'ils ont eu une influence historique immense, alors qu'ils ont exercé leur activité dans un espace et un temps minuscules par rapport à l'histoire du monde : une petite cité ou un tout petit pays, et qu'ils n'ont eu qu'un très petit nombre de disciples. Tous deux n'ont rien écrit, mais nous possédons sur eux des témoignages « oculaires » : sur Socrate, les Mémorables de Xénophon, les dialogues de Platon, sur Jésus, les Évangiles; et pourtant, il est très difficile pour nous de définir avec exactitude ce que furent le Jésus historique et le Socrate historique.”

Socrate

Socrate Citations

“Socrate mourant devint l'idéal nouveau, insoupçonné jusque-là, de la noble jeunesse grecque : avant tous, Platon, le type de l'adolescent hellénique, s'est prosterné devant cette image avec toute la passion de son âme rêveuse.”

Socrate

passion , jeunesse , âme

“Mais ou bien je ne suis pas un corrupteur, ou bien, si je suis un corrupteur, c'est sans le vouloir, de sorte que, dans l'un et l'autre cas, c'est une fausseté que tu dis! Or, si je corromps sans le vouloir, on n'a pas, d'après la loi, à traduire ici les auteurs de telles fautes, qui sont involontaires; mais c'est en particulier qu'on doit les prendre, pour les instruire en leur faisant des remontrances. En effet, c'est bien clair, il me suffira d'avoir été instruit pour cesser de faire ce qu'en vérité je fais sans le vouloir. Quant à toi, tu as évité de te mettre en rapport avec moi et de m'instruire, tu n'y as pas mis de bonne volonté; au contraire, tu me traduis ici, où c'est la loi de traduire ceux qui ont besoin d'être corrigés, mais non ceux qui ont besoin d'être instruits!”

Socrate

grc
Apologie de Socrate, 26a. Socrate répond à Mélétos, l'un de ses accusateurs, qui lui reprochait de corrompre la jeunesse.
Chez Platon

sortie , rapports , volonté , faute

“Criton, dit-il, à Asclépios nous sommes redevables d'un coq! Vous autres, acquittez ma dette! n'y manquez pas!”

Socrate

grc
Dernières paroles de Socrate dans le Phédon, 118a.
Chez Platon

“Employez votre temps à vous améliorer grâce aux écrits des autres, ainsi vous apprendrez facilement ce qui leur a demandé beaucoup de travail.”

Socrate

Autres citations rapportées

temps

“Craindre la mort, ce n'est rien d'autre en effet, Juges, que de passer pour sage alors qu'on ne l'est point, que de passer en effet pour savoir ce que l'on ne sait pas. Car de la mort, nul n'a de savoir, pas même si ce n'est pas précisément pour l'homme le plus grand des biens; mais on la craint, comme si l'on savait parfaitement qu'il n'y a pas de plus grand mal! Et cela, comment n'y pas voir cette ignorance justement qui est répréhensible, celle qui consiste à s'imaginer savoir ce qu'on ne sait pas?”

Socrate

grc
Apologie de Socrate, 29a-b.
Chez Platon

mort , hommes

Socrate: Citations en anglais

“Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know that this is of a truth — that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. …For which reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.”

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Socrates

41c–e
Plato, Apology

“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. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom. For the soul when on her progress to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture and education…”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“And now that the hour of departure is appointed to me, this is the hope with which I depart, and not I only, but every man that believes that he has his mind purified.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“But when returning into herself she [the soul] reflects; then she passes into the realm of purity, and eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging is unchanging. And this state of the soul is called wisdom.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“When I was young, Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know the department of philosophy which is called Natural Science; this appeared to me to have lofty aims, as being the science which has to do with the causes of things, and which teaches why a thing is, and is created and destroyed; and I always agitated myself with the consideration of such questions as these… I went on to examine the decay of them, and then to the study of the heaven and earth, and at last I concluded that I was wholly incapable of these inquiries… There was a time when I thought that I understood the meaning of greater and less pretty well… that ten is more than eight, and that two cubits are more than one, because two is twice one. I should be far from imagining… that I knew the cause of any of them, indeed I should, for I cannot satisfy myself that when one is added to one, the one to which the addition is made becomes two… nor can I understand how the division of one is the way to make two; for then a different cause would produce the same effect.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“Those also who are remarkable for having led holy lives are released from this earthly prison, and go to their pure home which is above, and dwell in the purer earth; and those who have duly purified themselves with philosophy live henceforth altogether without the body, in mansions fairer far than these…”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“Not that this confusion signifies to them who never care to think about the matter at all, for they have the wit to be well pleased with themselves, however great the turmoil of their ideas. But you, if you are a philosopher, will, I believe, do as I say.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“And thus one man makes a vortex all round and steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives the air as support for the earth, which is sort of a broad trough. Any power which in disposing them as they are disposes them for the best never enters into their minds, not do they imagine that there is any superhuman strength in that; they rather expect to find another Atlas of the world who is stronger and more everlasting and more containing than the good is, and are clearly of the opinion that the obligatory and containing power of the good is as nothing; and yet this is the principle which I would fain learn if anyone would teach me. But as I have failed either to discover myself or to learn of anyone else, the nature of the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have found to be the second best mode of inquiring into the cause.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“So now, Athenian men, more than on my own behalf must I defend myself, as some may think, but on your behalf, so that you may not make a mistake concerning the gift of god by condemning me. For if you kill me, you will not easily find another such person at all, even if to say in a ludicrous way, attached on the city by the god, like on a large and well-bred horse, by its size and laziness both needing arousing by some gadfly; in this way the god seems to have fastened me on the city, some such one who arousing and persuading and reproaching each one of you I do not stop the whole day settling down all over. Thus such another will not easily come to you, men, but if you believe me, you will spare me; but perhaps you might possibly be offended, like the sleeping who are awakened, striking me, believing Anytus, you might easily kill, then the rest of your lives you might continue sleeping, unless the god caring for you should send you another.”

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Socrates

30e
Plato, Apology

“I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care: I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with overvaluing the greater, and undervaluing the less. …For this is the command of God, as I would have you know…”

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Socrates

29d–30a
Plato, Apology

“If the knowledge which we acquired before birth was lost to us at birth, and afterwords by the use of the senses we recovered that which we previously knew, will not that which we call learning be a process of recovering our knowledge, and may not this be rightly termed recollection by us? …Then, Simmias, our souls must have existed before they were in the form of man—without bodies, and must have had intelligence.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong — acting the part of a good man or a bad. …For wherever a man's place is, whether the place he has chosen or that where he has been placed by a commander. there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace.”

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Socrates

28b–d
Plato, Apology

“Each of these private teachers who work for pay … inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.”

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Socrates

Plato, Republic, 493a
Plato, Republic

“And when you see a man who is repining at the approach of death, is not his reluctance a sufficient proof that he is not a lover of wisdom, but a lover of the body, and probably at the same time a lover of either money or power, or both?”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.”

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Socrates

Plato, Republic IX: 586a-b
Plato, Republic

“The true disciple of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by other men; they do not perceive that he is ever pursuing death and dying; and if this is true, why, having had the desire of death all his life long, should he repine at that which he has always been pursuing and desiring?”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“Socrates having heard Plato read the Lysis, said, "O Hercules! what a number of lies the young man has told about me." For he had set down a great many things as sayings of Socrates which he never said.”

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Socrates

Diogenes Laertius

“Order and discipline are the most important things in an army, and without them it is impossible to have any other service of the troops than of a confused heap of stones, bricks, timber, and tiles; but when everything is in its due place, as in a building, when the foundations and the covering are made of materials that will not grow rotten, and which no wet can damage, such as are stones and tiles, and when the bricks and timber are employed in their due places in the body of the edifice, they altogether make a house, which we value among our most considerable enjoyments.”

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Socrates

Memorabilia III.1
Xenophon

“What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? …I may and I must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world—may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. [Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control their sorrow; but now, when we saw him drinking, and saw too, that he had finished the draft, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at my own calamity at having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up, and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness:] What is this strange outcry? …I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet then, and have patience.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“There is a virtue, Simmias, which is named courage. Is not that a special attribute of the philosopher? …Again, there is temperance. Is not the calm, and control, and disdain of the passions which even the many call temperance, a quality belonging only to those who despise the body and live in philosophy?”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“If you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. Meletus and Anytus will not injure me: they cannot; for it is not in the nature of things that a bad man should injure one better than himself. I do not deny that he may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is doing him a great injury: but in that I do not agree with him; for the evil of doing what Anytus is doing — of unjustly taking away another man's life — is greater far.”

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Socrates

30c–d
Plato, Apology

“I would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the burial, Thus we lay out Socrates, or, Thus we follow him to the grave or bury him; for false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be of good cheer then, my good Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that as is usual, and as you think best.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“How grievously I was disappointed! …I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind and any other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person that began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, but who, when endeavored to explain the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones and muscles; and the bones he would say, are hard and have ligaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which also have a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why I an sitting here in a curved posture… and he would have a similar explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is that Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off to Megara or Boeotia… if they had been guided only by their idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen as the better and nobler part… to undergo any punishment that the State inflicts.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“Socrates: Shall we set down astronomy among the objects of study? Glaucon: I think so, to know something about the seasons, the months and the years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and for navigation. Socrates: It amuses me to see how afraid you are, lest the common herd of people should accuse you of recommending useless studies.”

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Socrates

Socrates as quoted by Plato. In Richard Garnett, Léon Vallée, Alois Brandl (eds.), The Universal Anthology: A Collection of the Best Literature (1899), Vol. 4, 111.
Attributed

“They who have a care of their souls, and do not merely live in the fashions of the body, say farewell to all this; they will not walk in the ways of the blind: and when philosophy offers them purification and release from evil, they feel that they ought not resist her influence, and to her they incline, and whither she leads they follow her.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“Really, Ischomachus, I am disposed to ask: "Does teaching consist in putting questions?" Indeed, the secret of your system has just this instant dawned upon me. I seem to see the principle in which you put your questions. You lead me through the field of my own knowledge, and then by pointing out analogies to what I know, persuade me that I really know some things which hitherto, as I believed, I had no knowledge of.”

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Socrates

Oeconomicus (The Economist) XIX.15 (as translated by H. G. Dakyns)
Xenophon

“Let us… be careful of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no truth or health or soundness in any arguments at all; but let us rather say that there is as yet no health in us, and that we must quit ourselves like men and do our best to gain health—you and all other men with a view to the whole of your future life, and I myself with a view to death.”

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Socrates

Plato, Phaedo

“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”

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Socrates

See All I know is that I know nothing on Wikipedia for a detailed account of the origins of this attribution.

μοι νυνὶ γέγονεν ἐκ τοῦ διαλόγου μηδὲν εἰδέναι· ὁπότε γὰρ τὸ δίκαιον μὴ οἶδα ὅ ἐστιν, σχολῇ εἴσομαι εἴτε ἀρετή τις οὖσα τυγχάνει εἴτε καὶ οὔ, καὶ πότερον ὁ ἔχων αὐτὸ οὐκ εὐδαίμων ἐστὶν ἢ εὐδαίμων.

Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.

Republic, 354b-c (conclusion of book I), as translated by M.A. Grube in Republic (Grube Edition) (1992) revised by C.D.C. Reeve, p. 31

Confer Apology 21d (see above), Theaetetus 161b (see above) and Meno 80d1-3: "So now I do not know what virtue is; perhaps you knew before you contacted me, but now you are certainly like one who does not know."

Confer Cicero, Academica, Book I, section 1 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0032%3Abook%3D1: "ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat ("He himself thinks he knows one thing, that he knows nothing"). Often quoted as "scio me nihil scire" or "scio me nescire." A variant is found in von Kues, De visione Dei, XIII, 146 (Werke, Walter de Gruyter, 1967, p. 312): "...et hoc scio solum, quia scio me nescire... [I know alone, that (or because) I know, that I do not know]." In the modern era, the Latin quote was back-translated to Greek as "ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα", hèn oîda hóti oudèn oîda).

Confer Diogenes Laertius, II.32 (see above)
Misattributed