Sokrates taught:
There is no better way to true glory than to endeavor to be good rather than to seem so.
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 wherever a man's place is, whether the place he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything but of disgrace.
The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
Let every man be of good cheer about his soul, who has ruled his body and followed knowledge and goodness in this life; for if death be a journey to another place and there all the dead are, what good can be greater than this? Be of good cheer about death and know this of a truth that no evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death.
To want as little as possible is to make the nearest approach to the Deity.
Knowledge is the food of the soul.
We ought not to retaliate and render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. Neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil is ever right. Act toward others as you would have others act toward you. Forgive your enemies, render good for evil, and kiss even the hand that is upraised to smite.
Grant me to be beautiful in soul and may all I possess of outward things be at harmony with those within. Teach me to think wisdom the only riches.
If thou wouldst know what is the wisdom of the gods and what their love is, render thyself deserving the communication of some of those divine secrets, which may not be penetrated by man and which are imparted to those alone who consult, adore, and obey the Deity.
Sokrates, speaking of his life-work, says:
In this research and scrutiny I have been long engaged. I interrogate every man of reputation. I prove him to be defective in wisdom but I can not prove it so as to make him sensible of the defect. Fulfilling the mission imposed upon me, I have established the veracity of the god (Apollo), who meant to pronounce that human wisdom is of little reach and worth; and that he who like Sokrates feels most convinced of his own worthlessness as to wisdom is really the wisest of men, for the truth is, O men of Athens, the Deity only is wise. My service to the god has not only constrained me to live in constant poverty and neglect of political estimation, but has brought upon me a host of bitter enemies in those whom I have examined and exposed, while the bystanders talk of me as a wise man because they give me credit for wisdom respecting all the points on which my exposure of others turns.
Whatever be the danger and obloquy which I may incur, it would be monstrous indeed, if having maintained my place in the ranks as an hoplite under your generals at Delium and Potidaea, I were now from fear of death or anything else to disobey the oracle and desert the post which the god has assigned to me, the duty of living for philosophy and cross-questioning both myself and others. And should you even now offer to acquit me, on condition of my renouncing this duty, I should tell you with all respect and affection that I will obey the god rather than you and that I will persist until my dying day in cross-questioning you, exposing your want of wisdom and virtue and reproaching you until the defect be remedied. My mission as your monitor is a mark of the special favor of the gods to you and if you condemn me it will be your loss; for you will find none other such. Perhaps you will ask me, Why cannot you go away, Sokrates, and live in peace and silence? This is the hardest of all questions for me to answer to your satisfaction. If I tell you that silence on my part would be disobedience to the god, you will think me in jest and not believe me. You will believe me still less, if I tell you that the greatest blessing which can happen to man is to carry on discussions every day about virtue and those other matters which you hear me conversing, when I cross-examine myself and others and that life without such examination is no life at all. Nevertheless so stands the fact, incredible as it may seem to you.
I certainly have my enemies [the Pharisaical party and the High Priests of orthodoxy] and these will be my destruction if I am destroyed; of that I am certain; not that Meletos, nor yet Anytos, but the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many more—there is no danger of my being the last of them.
Later, after his condemnation, he added:
And I prophesy to you, my murderers, that immediately after my death, punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be as you suppose; far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now. For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censuring your lives, you are mistaken—that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others but to be improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter to the judges who have condemned me.
How true have the last twenty-three centuries proved these words to be! How many deaths and ruined lives have been accomplished by that same spirit of intolerance! It led the way from Gethsemane to Golgotha. It is responsible for the death of the martyrs in all ages. It lighted the fagots that consumed the bodies of Giordano Bruno and Joan of Arc. Yes, and hundreds of others. How just is the praise with which the Saint Mark of Sokrates ends the Memorabilia of his master:
Of those who know what sort of a man Sokrates was, such as are lovers of virtue continue to regret him above all other men even to the present date, as having contributed in the highest degree to their advancement in goodness. To me, being such as I have described him, so pious that he did nothing without the sanction of the gods; so just, that he wronged no man even in the most trifling affair, but was of service in most important matters to those who enjoyed his society; so temperate that he never preferred pleasure to virtue; so wise that he never erred in distinguishing the better from the worse, needing no counsel from others but being sufficient in himself to discriminate between them; and so capable of discovering the character of others, of confuting those who were in error and of exhorting them to virtue and honor, he seemed to be such as the best and happiest of men would be.
Then to side with Truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit and 'tis prosperous to be just,