Socrates Symposium Quotes

And Agathon said, It is probable, Socrates, that I knew nothing of what I had said. And yet spoke you beautifully, Agathon, he said.

If I am in love, many things about the world, not just the immediate object of my love, seem lovable. To say 'I love X' is somehow really to say 'X inspires love in me', and that love then attaches itself to objects other than X as well. The expansiveness of love is a natural means of ascent between levels.

all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors

Even now I'm well aware that if I allowed myself to listen to him I couldn't resist but would have the same experience again. He makes me admit that, in spite of my great defects, I neglect myself and instead get involved in Athenian politics. So I force myself to block my ears and go away, like someone escaping from the Sirens, to prevent myself sitting there beside him till I grow old.

I can't refute you, Socrates," Agathon said, "so I dare say you're right." "No," said Socrates, "it's the truth you can't refute, my dear Agathon. Socrates is a pushover.

The Republic isn't as much fun as The Symposium. It's all long speeches, and nobody bursting in drunk to woo Socrates in the middle.

If you’re intelligent, you find a few sensible men much more frightening than a senseless crowd. - Agathon to Socrates

You know what I'd love to read? A Dialogue between Bron and Shevek and Socrates. Socrates would love it too. I bet he wanted people who argued. You can tell he did, you can tell that's what he loved really, at least in The Symposium.

All right, all right. There’s a copy of Plato’s Symposium there. In it he wrote that his old mentor Socrates was taught philosophy by a woman. Her name was Diotima.

It looks, Socrates, as though I didn't know what I was talking about then.

Socrates described his philosophical inspiration as the work of a personal, benign demon. His teacher, Diotima of Mantineia, tells him (in Plato’s Symposium) that “Everything demonic is intermediate between God and mortal. God has no contact with man,” she continues; “only through the demonic is there intercourse and conversation between man and gods, whether in the waking state or during sleep.

Our way would seem quite familiar to the Romans, more by far than the Greek way. Socrates in the Symposium, when Alcibiades challenged him to drink two quarts of wine, could have done so or not as he chose, but the diners-out of Horace's day had no such freedom. He speaks often of the master of the drinking, who was always appointed to dictate how much each man was to drink. Very many unseemly dinner parties must have paved the way for that regulation. A Roman in his cups would've been hard to handle, surly, quarrelsome, dangerous. No doubt there had been banquets without number which had ended in fights, broken furniture, injuries, deaths. Pass a law then, the invariable Roman remedy, to keep drunkenness within bounds. Of course it worked both ways: everybody was obliged to empty the same number of glasses and the temperate man had to drink a great deal more than he wanted, but whenever laws are brought in to regulate the majority who have not abused their liberty for the sake of the minority who have, just such results come to pass. Indeed, any attempt to establish a uniform average in that stubbornly individual phenomenon, human nature, will have only one result that can be foretold with certainty: it will press hardest on the best.

Socrates: Do you think that, if someone asked you whether you had two eyes or three, or two hands or four, or something else like this, you would give one answer at one time and another at another, or always the same? [117A] Alcibiades: By this point I’m afraid about myself, but I think it would be the same. Socrates: Is it because you know? Is this the cause? Alcibiades: I think so, for my part. Socrates: So when you unwillingly give opposite answers about things, it’s clear you don’t know about them? Alcibiades: That’s likely.

But far more dangerous are the others, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. The disseminators of this tale are the accusers whom I dread; for their hearers are apt to fancy that such enquirers do not believe in the existence of the gods. And they are many, and their charges against me are of ancient date, and they were made by them in the days when you were more impressible than you are now—in childhood, or it may have been in youth—and the cause when heard went by default, for there was none to answer. And hardest of all, I do not know and cannot tell the names of my accusers; unless in the chance case of a Comic poet.

Love, he said, is not a god, for a god cannot want anything; but one of those great spirits who are messengers between gods and men. He does not visit fools, who are content with their low condition, but those who aware of their own need and desire, by embracing the beautiful and good, to beget goodness and beauty; for creation is man’s immortality and brings him nearest to the gods. All creatures, he said, cherish the children of their flesh; yet the noblest progeny of love are wisdom and glorious deeds, for mortal children die, but these live forever; and these are begotten not of the body but the soul. Mortal passion sinks us in mortal pleasure, so that the wings of the soul grow weak; and such lovers may rise to the good indeed, but not to the very best. But the winged soul rises from love to love, from the beautiful that is born and dies, to beauty is only a moving shadow flung upon a wall.

Socrates: For, I think, advice about each thing is a matter for the one who knows, and not for one who’s wealthy. Alcibiades: Why, of course.

Socrates: Then alas, Alcibiades, what a condition you suffer from! I hesitate to name it, but, since we two are alone, it must be said. You are wedded to stupidity, best of men, of the most extreme sort, as the argument accuses you and you accuse yourself. So this is why you are leaping into the affairs of the city before you have been educated. You are not the only one to suffer from this; most of those who manage the affairs of the city are the same way, except [C] a few—perhaps including your guardian, Pericles.

The mind’s sight becomes sharp only when the body’s eyes go past their prime.

Aristophanes, in Plato's "Symposium", is purported to suggest that human form was not always as it is today: Originally, humans were spherical, with four arms, four legs, and two faces on either side of a single head. (In evolutionary terms, it's hard to see the advantage of this construction.) Such was their hubris that they dared to challenge the gods themselves. Zeus, in his wisdom, split the upstarts in two, each half becoming a distinct entity. Since then, men and women have been running around in a panic, searching for their lost counterparts, in a desire to be whole again. (Plato makes clear what he thinks of this theory by having Socrates casually dismiss it. We should at least give some credit to Aristophanes for originality.)

I came to philosophy first through Plato. I was very interested in Plato, the person and his works. [The] Republic is a much larger work. I was fascinated particularly by his Symposium. It is a beautiful work with Plato’s signature dialogues and the speech on Socrates, Aristophanes and others. I read the history of western philosophy and eventually moved to Indian philosophy.