Gorgias Quotes

“If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“for philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“I would rather . . . that the whole world should be at odds with me, and oppose me, rather than that I myself should be at odds with myself, and contradict myself.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“So I spoke the truth when I said that neither I nor you nor any other man would rather do injustice than suffer it: for it is worse.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“He who desires to be happy must pursue and practice temperance and run away from intemperance as fast as his legs will carry him.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“If you want to silence me, silence philosophy, who is my love.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“Will not the good man, who says whatever he says with a view to the best, speak with a reference to some standard and not at random; just as all other artists, whether the painter, the builder, the shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work, and do not select and apply at random what they apply, but strive to give a definite form to it?”
― Plato, Gorgias

“The very bad men come from the class of those who have power. And yet in that very class there may arise good men, and worthy of all admiration they are, for where there is great power to do wrong, to live and to die justly is a hard thing, and greatly to be praised, and few there are who attain to this.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“No man who is not an utter fool and coward is afraid of death itself, but he is afraid of doing wrong. For to go to the world below having one's soul full of injustice is the last and worst of all evils.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“So when the orator is more convincing than the doctor, what happens is that an ignorant person is more convincing than the expert before an equally ignorant audience.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“Where there is great power to do wrong, to live and to die justly is a hard thing.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“That the makers of laws are the majority who are weak; and they make laws and distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and to their own interests.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“the very bad men come from the class of those who have power”
― Plato, Gorgias

“Renouncing the honors at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well as I can.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“Every man ought in every way to guard himself against doing wrong . . . And if he . . . does wrong, he ought of his own accord to go where he will be immediately punished; he will run to the judge, as he would to the physician, in order that the disease of injustice may not be rendered chronic and become the incurable cancer of the soul.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“I am one of those who are very willing to be refuted if I say anything which is not true, and very willing to refute anyone else who says what is not true, and quite as ready to be refuted as to refute; for I hold that this is the greater gain of the two, just as the gain is greater of being cured of a very great evil than of curing another.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“In my opinion it's preferable for me to be a musician with an out-of-tune lyre or a choir-leader with a cacophonous choir, and it's preferable for almost everyone in the world to find my beliefs misguided and wrong, rather than for just one person - me - to contradict and clash with myself.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“Nevertheless, there's still a dissenting voice, albeit a single one—mine”
― Plato, Gorgias

“You, Gorgias, like myself, have had great experience of disputations, and you must have observed, I think, that they do not always terminate in mutual edification, or in the definition by either party of the subjects which they are discussing; but disagreements are apt to arise—somebody says that another has not spoken truly or clearly; and then they get into a passion and begin to quarrel, both parties conceiving that their opponents are arguing from personal feeling only and jealousy of themselves, not from any interest in the question at issue. And sometimes they will go on abusing one another until the company at last are quite vexed at themselves for ever listening to such fellows.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“A rhetorician is capable of speaking effectively against all comers, whatever the issue, and can consequently be more persuasive in front of crowds about… anything he likes.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“You will never come to any harm in the practice of virtue, if you are a really good and true man.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“So where power is in the hands of a savage and uneducated tyrant, anyone who is greatly his superior will doubtless be an object of fear to the ruler, and never able to be on terms of genuine friendship with him.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“And the same will be true of the orator and the oratory in relation to all other arts. The orator need have no knowledge of the truth about thongs; it is enough for him to have discovered a knack of persuading the ignorant that he seems to know more than the experts.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“CALLICLES: There is no end to the rubbish this fellow speaks. Tell me, Socrates, aren't you ashamed at your age of laying these verbal traps and counting it a god-send if a man makes a slip of the tongue?”
― Plato, Gorgias

“For knowing their own inferiority, I suspect that they are too glad of equality.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“Deixa que te desprezem, te considerem insensato, te insultem, se quiserem, e até, por Zeus, sofre que te esbofeteiem, coisa que tu achas entre todas infamante: não te acontecerá nenhum mal se fores realmente um homem de bem, dedicado à prática da virtude.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“For by what right did Xerxes invade Greece, or his father Scythia? or in any other of the ten thousand similar cases of the kind that might be produced? No, no, these men no doubt follow nature in acting thus, aye by my faith and law too, the law of nature ; not however I dare say that which we frame by way of moulding the characters of the best and strongest of us, whom we take from infancy, and taming them like lions by spells and conjuring tricks reduce them to abject slavery, telling them that they must be content with their fair share and that this is the meaning of fairness and justice. But I fancy when there arises a man of ability he flings off all these restraints and bursts them asunder and makes his escape; and trampling under foot all our written enactments (formularies)? and juggleries and spells and laws, clean against nature every one of them, our would-be slave rises up against us and shows himself our master, and then natural justice shines forth in its true light.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“For by what right did Xerxes invade Greece, or his father Scythia? or in any other of the ten thousand similar cases of the kind that might be produced? No, no, these men no doubt follow nature in acting thus, aye by my faith and law too, the law of nature ; not however I dare say that which we frame by way of moulding the characters of the best and strongest of us, whom we take from infancy, and taming them like lions by spells and conjuring tricks reduce them to abject slavery, telling them that they must be 484 content with their fair share and that this is the meaning of fairness and justice. But I fancy when there arises a man of ability he flings off all these restraints and bursts them asunder and makes his escape; and trampling under foot all our written enactments (formularies)? and juggleries and spells and laws, clean against nature every one of them, our would-be slave rises up against us and shows himself our master, and then natural justice shines forth in its true light.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“For no one who isn't totally bereft of reason and courage is afraid to die; doing what's unjust is what he's afraid of.”
― Plato, Gorgias

“Perhaps one who is truly a man should stop thinking about how long he will live. He should not be attached to life but should commit these concerns to the god and believe the women who say that not one single person can escape fate. He should thereupon give consideration to how he might live the part of his life still before him as well as possible.”
― Plato, Gorgias