"Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise."

"What kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and who would be pleased to refute anyone who says anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn’t be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else from it."

"Without any one teaching him he will recover his knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions."

"Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest."

"It behooves those who take the young to task to leave them room for excuse, lest they drive them to be hardened by too much rebuke."

"A man ought not to return evil for evil, as many think, since at no time ought we to do an injury to our neighbor."

"Yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route."

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."

"I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.,."

"Will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice?"