Arms Quote by Seneca the Younger

The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

— David Antin

“Life is short, but art is long. Sophocles is dead, but Oedipus lives on…Each of us when we read a great piece of literature…

— James W. Sire

Socrates' fame spread all over Greece, and the most respected and educated men from all around came to him, in order to enjoy his…

— Moses Mendelssohn

He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an…

— W. Somerset Maugham

“There was a young man favorably endowed as an Alcibiades. He lost his way in the world. In his need he looked about for…

— Soren Kierkegaard

“When someone blamed Hecataeus the sophist because that, being invited to the public table, he had not spoken one word all supper-time, Archidamidas answered…

— Plutarch

Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. "He would have been a better man under different circumstances." Gen looked at him. "True enough," he said.…

— Megan Whalen Turner

Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.

— Aristotle

So Socrates was a kind of gadfly. He was a sort of philosophical urban gorilla hanging around in the middle of Athens, asking these…

— Rebecca Goldstein

“And this puts me in mind of that rich gentleman of Rome, who had been solicitous, with great expense, to procure men that were…

— Michel de Montaigne

The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.

— John Milton

“Maybe even more important than the D.B.P. [Divine Brotherhood of Pythagoras], ∞-wise is the protomystic Parmenides of Elea (c.515-? BCE), not only because of…

— David Foster Wallace