Meno
Plato
Top 10 Best Quotes
“We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection.”
“Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them.”
“But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know;—that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.”
“the good are not so by nature...For if they were, this would follow: if the good were so by nature, we would have people who knew which among the young were good by nature; we would take those whom they had pointed out and guard them in the Acropolis, sealing them up there much more carefully than gold so that no one could corrupt them, and when they reached maturity they would be useful to their cities.”
“I mean this: we were right to agree that good men must be beneficent, and that this could not be otherwise.”
“When two friends, like you and me, are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that we give real responses, but that we base our responses solely on what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows.”
“The same is true of patience or mental quickness. A brain like a sponge and an even temper are all very well in one who minds the proper use of such things; to anyone else, they may bring harm.”
“Socrates, I certainly used to hear, even before meeting you, that you never do anything else than exist in a state of perplexity yourself and put others in a state of perplexity. And now you seem to me to be bewitching me and drugging me and simply subduing me with incantations, so that I come to be full of perplexity. And you seem to me, if it is even appropriate to make something of a joke, to be altogether, both in looks and in other respects, like the flat torpedo fish of the sea. For, indeed, it always makes anyone who approaches and touches it grow numb, and you seem to me now to have done that very sort of thing to me, making me numb. For truly, both in soul and in mouth, I am numb and have nothing with which I can answer you. And yet thousands of times I have made a great many speeches about virtue, and before many people, and done very well, in my own opinion anyway; yet now I’m altogether unable to say what it is.”
“So we would be right to say the seers and prophets just mentioned are ‘divine’ and ‘inspired’ – likewise, everyone with a knack for poetry. Likewise, politicians and public figures are nothing less than divine and possessed when – under some god’s inspiration and influence – they give speeches that lead to success in important matters, even they have no idea what they are talking about. – Quite so.”
“If then virtue is something in the soul, and necessarily good, it must be a matter of mindfulness. For all other qualities of soul are in themselves neither good nor harmful. As accompanied by forethought or thoughtlessness, they become good or harmful. This argument shows that virtue, being good, must be a kind of mindfulness.”
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Book Keywords:
confusion, virtue, perplexity, good
