Quote of the Week

Socrates put on trial, for undermining state religion and corrupting young people, offered this speech in his own defense, as reported in Plato's Apology. And this is after he had been convicted by the jury, where he refused to accept his penalty, exile from Athens or a commitment to silence, even though he knew the next sentence would be death.

"Perhaps someone might say, "Socrates, can you not go away from us and live quietly, without talking?" Now this is the hardest thing to make some of you believe. For if I say that such conduct would be disobedience to the god and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you."