SOCRATES: Practise yourself, sweet friend, in learning what you ought to know, before you enter on politics; and then you will have an antidote which will keep you out of harm's way.
ALCIBIADES: Good advice, Socrates, but I wish that you would explain to me in what way I am to take care of myself.
SOCRATES: Have we not made an advance? for we are at any rate tolerably well agreed as to what we are, and there is no longer any danger, as we once feared, that we might be taking care not of ourselves, but of something which is not ourselves.
ALCIBIADES: That is true.
SOCRATES: And the next step will be to take care of the soul, and look to that?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Leaving the care of our bodies and of our properties to others?
ALCIBIADES: Very good.
SOCRATES: But how can we have a perfect knowledge of the things of the soul?—For if we know them, then I suppose we shall know ourselves. Can we really be ignorant of the excellent meaning of the Delphian inscription, of which we were just now speaking?
ALCIBIADES: What have you in your thoughts, Socrates?