“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.”

Plato, Phaedo

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Socrates168

classical Greek Athenian philosopher -470–-399 BC

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“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.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

“Can any thing in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster?”

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“Can any thing in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!”

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Misattributed
Variant: What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

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“All the things of this world are no more than earth. Place them in a heap under your feet and you will be so much the nearer to heaven.”

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