“We shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and a migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the site of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now, if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O friends and judges, can be greater than this? …Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. …What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they would not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.”

—  Socrates

40c–41c
Plato, Apology

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 28, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: either death is a state of…" by Socrates?
Socrates photo
Socrates 168
classical Greek Athenian philosopher -470–-399 BC

Related quotes

William Shakespeare photo
John Keats photo

“Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
---"On death”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Complete Poems and Selected Letters

Philip K. Dick photo

“How undisturbed, the sleep of the foolish.”

Source: Radio Free Albemuth

John Donne photo
William Shakespeare photo
D.H. Lawrence photo

“I suppose that's what we do in death⎯⎯⎯sleep in wonder.”

Source: Sons and Lovers (1913), Ch.11

Hesiod photo

“Night, having Sleep, the brother of Death.”

Hesiod Greek poet

Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), line 754.

Miguel de Unamuno photo
Richard Siken photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!”

Canto I
Queen Mab (1813)

Related topics