Apology
Published:
“A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong—acting the part of a good man or of a bad.”
“For to fear death is indeed to pretend to be wise when not, since it is to pretend to know what is unknown; and no one knows whether death, of which men are afraid because they consider it to be the greatest evil for a person, may not indeed be the greatest good. And yet is this not an ignorance of the most con- b temptible kind, the ignorance of thinking yourself to know what you don’t know?“
“Know it well, that if you kill such a one as I say I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet Anytus—they cannot, for it is not given to a bad man to be able to injure a man better than himself.”
“…you have often heard me mention in many circumstances, namely, that something divine and supernatural (daimonion) happens to me … This sign, which comes as a kind of voice, first began for me when I was a child; whenever it comes, it always forbids me to do whatever I am about to do, but never makes any positive commands.”
- RH apophatic, LH affirmative
“If you think that by killing men you will stop all censure of your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either very possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not by disabling others, but by improving yourselves.“