Szókratész idézet

oldal 3

„A legjobb módja annak, hogy becsülettel éljünk ebben a világban, az, ha azzá válunk, aminek tettetjük magunkat.”

„Légy olyan, amilyennek látszani szeretnél.”

„Tégy, ahogy jónak látod, úgyis megbánod, bárhogyan cselekszel.”

„Ha volna egy kutyád, amelynek hasznát látod a nyájadnál, s a pásztoroknak kezes lenne, téged viszont megmorogna, ha közelednél hozzá, eszedbe sem jutna haragudni, hanem megpróbálnád kedveskedéssel szelíddé tenni.”

„Egyvalamit tudok biztosan, azt hogy nem tudok semmit.”

„Egy ilyen asszonnyal élni hasznos is lehet, akár egy dühöngő lovat betörni: ezután az ember felkészültebben fogadja embertársait az agorán.”

„Ha megvizsgálod azt, amit erénynek neveznek az emberek, rájössz, hogy a tanulás és gyakorlás által gyarapodik.”

„A bor elaltatja a férfiak lelkében a fájdalmat, mint a mandragóra az embereket, és lángra gyújtja a vidámságot, mit a tűz az olajat.”

„Csak a gonoszak kívánjak, hogy a halál után ne legyen semmi, és logikus is, hogy így gondolkoznak, minthogy ez áll az érdekükben.”

„Ne felejtsd el, óh, Kritón, hogy Aszklépiosznak tartozunk egy kakassal. Add meg neki a nevemben, ne feledkezz meg róla.”

„És hát akkór nem szóval, hanem tettel bizonyítottam be, hogy én a halállal (…) egy fikarcnyit sem törődöm, de hogy semmi igazságtalanságot, semmi gonoszságot ne kövessek el, azzal mindennél inkább.”

„Meggyőződésem, hogy a Föld gömbölyű. Nincs szüksége rá, hogy bármi tartsa, mert a Világegyetem középpontjában van, s így nem tudna hová leesni. Azonkívül mag vagyok győződve, hogy sokkal de sokkal nagyobb mint amekkorának mi gondoljuk, (…) olyanok vagyunk mint a pocsolya körül élő hangyák, vagy békák.”

„Senki sem cselekszik önként (szándékosan) jogtalanul.”

„Mindig olyan voltam, hogy semmi másra nem hallgattam, csak arra az érvre, amely, ha a dolgot megfontoltam, előttem a legjobbnak tetszett.”

„Minthogy meddő vagyok a tudásban, s az isten (Apollón) megtiltotta, hogy nemzzek, arra kényszerít, hogy bába legyek.”

„Azt hiszed tudod mi a demokrácia, ha nem ismered a démoszt?!”

„Nem vagyok sem a gyomor, sem az alvás, sem a nemi vágy rabja, az szerinted nem attól van, hogy ismerek valamit, ami kellemesebb ezeknél, ami nemcsak a szükség kielégítésének a pillanatában tölt el örömmel, hanem még azzal a reménnyel is kecsegtet, hogy örök hasznot hajt.”

„Az én szülészi munkám a bábákéra emlékeztet, csak ők az asszonyokkal foglalkoznak, én meg a férfiakkal, ők a testtel én a lélekkel.”

„Ő állt a legközelebb az istenekhez, mivel neki volt a legkevesebb vágya.”

“Whichever you do, you will repent it.”

“What I have understood is good; and so, I think, what I have not understood is; only the book requires a Delian diver to get at the meaning of it.”

“To begin well is not a trifling thing, but yet not far from a trifling thing.”

“It is necessary to learn geometry only so far as might enable a man to measure land for the purposes of buying and selling.”

“Wisdom begins in wonder.”

“Be as you wish to seem.”

“One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.”

“All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.”

“[In what way would you have us bury you? ] In any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not walk away from you. …I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who have been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body… And though I have spoken many words in the endeavor to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed—these words of mine, with which I comforted you and myself, have had, I perceive, no effect upon Crito. …you should be my surety to him that I shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned or buried.”

“I am quite ready, Simmias and Cebes, that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and good and to men departed who are better than those whom I leave behind; and therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead, and, as has been said of old, some far better thing for the good than for the evil.”

“Now the compound or composite may be supposed to be naturally capable of being dissolved in like manner as being compounded; but that which is uncompounded, and that only, must be, if anything is, indissoluble. …And the uncompounded may be assumed to be the same and unchanging, where the compound is always changing and never the same? …Is that idea or essence, which in the dialectical process we define as essence of true existence—whether essence of equality, beauty, or anything else: are these essences, I say, liable at times to some degree of change? or are they each of them always what they are, having the same simple, self-existent and unchanging forms, and not admitting of variation at all, or in any way, or at any time?”

“This was the method which I adopted: I first assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest, and then I affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this, whether relating to the cause or to anything else; and that which disagreed I regarded as untrue. …I want to show you the nature of that cause which has occupied my thoughts, and I shall have to go back to those familiar words which are in the mouth of everyone, and first of all assume that there is an absolute beauty and goodness and greatness, and the like; grant me this, and I hope to be able to show you the nature of the cause, and to prove the immortality of the soul.”

“[In the world below…] The wise and orderly soul is conscious of her situation, and follows in the path; but the soul which desires the body, and which… has long been fluttering about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after many struggles and many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by her attendant genius, and when she arrives at the place where the other souls are gathered, if she be impure and have done impure deeds or have been concerned in foul murders or other crimes… from that soul everyone flees and turns away; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are fulfilled…”

“You would say… inexperienced as I am, and ready to start, as the proverb says, at my own shadow, I cannot afford to give up the sure ground of principle. …and when you are further required to give an explanation of this principle, you would go on to assume a higher principle, and the best of the higher ones, until you found a resting place; but you would not refuse the principle and consequences in your reasoning like the Eristics—at least if you wanted to discover real existence.”

“Nothing is more uncommon than a very large or a very small man; and this applies generally to all extremes, whether of great and small, or swift and slow, or fair and foul, or black and white; and whether the instances you select be man or dogs or anything else, few are the extremes, but many are in the mean between them.”

“If the entire soul, then, follows without rebellion the part which loves wisdom, the result is that in general each part can carry out its own function—can be just, in other words—and in particular each is able to enjoy pleasures which are its own, the best, and, as far as possible, the truest. … When one of the other parts takes control, there are two results: it fails to discover its own proper pleasure, and it compels the other parts to pursue a pleasure which is not their own, and not true.”

“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”

“I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing… as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. And so I go on my way, obedient to the god, and make inquisition into anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and this occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.”

“I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.”

“I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought they knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom — therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was.”

“And this, Cebes, is the reason why the true lovers of knowledge are temperate and brave; and not for the reason that the world gives. For not in that way does the soul of a philosopher reason. …Never fear, Simmias and Cebes, that a soul which has been thus nurtured and has had these pursuits, will at her departure from the body be scattered and blown away by the winds and be nowhere and nothing.”

“Then I heard someone who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which he read that the mind was the disposer and cause of all… and I said to myself: If mind is the disposer, mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular in the best place; and I argued that if anyone desired to find out the cause of the generation or destruction of anything, he must find out what state of being or suffering or doing was best for that thing, and therefore a man had only consider the best for himself and others, and then he would also know the worse, for that the same science comprised both.”

“The soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intelligible, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintelligible, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable.”

“But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth exists only in bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste and use for the purposes of his lusts—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy—do you suppose that such a soul as this will depart pure and unalloyed?”

“I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium. …I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of my senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better had recourse to ideas, and seek in them truth in existence. I dare to say that the simile is not perfect—for I am far from admitting that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas, sees them only "through a glass darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working and effects.”

“I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods. For "many," as they say in the mysteries, "are the thyrsus bearers, but few are the mystics,"—meaning, as I interpret the words, the true philosophers.”

“[One of the company… said: …is not this the direct contrary of what we admitted before—that out of the greater came the less and out of the less the greater, and that opposites are simply generated from opposites; whereas now this seems to be utterly denied. ] …then we were speaking of opposites in the concrete, and now of the essential opposite which, as is affirmed, neither in us nor in nature can ever be at variance with itself… these essetial opposites will never, as we maintain, admit of generation into or out of one another.”

“When the feeling of pleasure or pain in the soul is most intense, all of us naturally suppose that the object of this intense feeling is then plainest and truest; but this is not the case. …because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, and engrosses her and makes her believe that to be true which the body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body and having the same delights she is obliged to have the same habits and ways, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure to the world below, but is always saturated with the body; so that she soon [after death] sinks into another body and there germinates and grows, and has therefore no part in the communion of the divine and pure and simple.”

“If generation were in a straight line only, and there were no compensation or circle in nature, no turn or return into one another, then you know that all things would at last have the same form and pass into the same state, and there would be no more generation of them.”