educators-from-greece

"I would contend that someone of Latin origin will find no other foster fathers, if the Greeks are excluded; after all, the Greek and Latin peoples could be considered to be one and the same, even though the former is older and the Latin younger, because it follows from the Greek. But surely the Greeks seem to have given the ripe fruits of physical and intellectual culture to all men and certainly to their Latin brothers. This alone is suf­ficient reason why they must be welcomed with general benevolence."

"[The Romans] were trained through the laws of the Greeks, through the customs of the Greeks. Through our disciplines, through our arts the Roman imperium was enlarged; over lands and seas Italian fame and Latin virtue reached the extreme borders of the earth through the travelling example of the Greeks."

"We derive the character of one man from the many, while you teach that you may know all from one."

"Especially you, seem to have approached antiquity more closely than the other city states of Italy regarding your descent, language, and culture to such a degree, that you can easily discern a colony of the Romans [in Florence], if you take into account, among other things, the very name of your city, as it is in my opinion not so much derived from the river as it is from the sacred name of the City."

"Whoever neglects Greek literature will entirely lack this means of help which your ancestors used to draw from the Greek source so as to learn, preserve, and amplify their literature."

"If among almost all peoples it is a law that the greatest gratitude is owed to those by whom you are educated."

"It is what a man has thought out directly for himself that alone has true value. Thinkers may be classed as follows: those who, in the first place, think for themselves, and those who think directly for others. The former thinkers are the genuine, they think for themselves in both senses of the word; they are the true philosophers; they alone are in earnest. Moreover, the enjoyment and happiness of their existence consist in thinking. The others are the sophists; they wish to seem, and seek their happiness in what they hope to get from other people; their earnestness consists in this."

"To offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution; but we think it virtuous to become friendly with a lover who is known to be a man of honour. So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom."

"Each of these private teachers who work for pay, whom the politicians call sophists and regard as their rivals, inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom. It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors and desires of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping, how it is to be approached and touched, and when and by what things it is made most savage or gentle, yes, and the several sounds it is wont to utter on the occasion of each, and again what sounds uttered by another make it tame or fierce, and after mastering this knowledge by living with the creature and by lapse of time should call it wisdom, and should construct thereof a system and art and turn to the teaching of it, knowing nothing in reality about which of these opinions and desires is honorable or base, good or evil, just or unjust, but should apply all these terms to the judgments of the great beast, calling the things that pleased it good, and the things that vexed it bad, having no other account to render of them, but should call what is necessary just and honorable, never having observed how great is the real difference between the necessary and the good, and being incapable of explaining it to another. ... Do you suppose that there is any difference between such a one and the man who thinks that it is wisdom to have learned to know the moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly, whether about painting or music or, for that matter, politics?"

"Is not a Sophist, Hippocrates, one who deals wholesale or retail in the food of the soul? To me that appears to be his nature. … Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful. Neither do their customers know … unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul."

"Wer nicht um der Philosophie willen philosophiert, sondern die Philosophie als Mittel braucht, ist ein Sophist."

"According to Heidegger, the blind desire for manipulation [of nature] came about because modernity turned reason—which was, for the ancients, and even for the medievals, a source of valuable goals—into a purely instrumental faculty."

"To study the art of living is to engage in one of its forms."

"Both dogmatism and metaphysics … are attempts to project one’s own views on the world, and they are just as much attempts to hide precisely this projection from themselves as well as from their audience."

"The one reaction Nietzsche cannot tolerate is indifference, and this is what his use of hyperbole is designed to eliminate."

"Irony, which in Socrates’ case consists of saying “too little,” functions for him just as hyperbole, which is saying “too much,” functions for Nietzsche."

"For Socrates, virtue was nothing but its own pursuit. And only the promise of happiness is happiness itself."

"All we are now concerned with is the search for “new and improved” version of whatever means are already available for attaining goals such means make possible. The value of the goals themselves is irrelevant … What counts is doing things better than before. Whether such things are worth doing in the first place is no longer a question."

"Man conquers the world by conquering himself"

"Happiness is a good flow of life."

"No one entrusts a secret to a drunken man; but one will entrust a secret to a good man; therefore, the good man will not get drunk."

"(The end is) life in agreement with nature"

"Love is a God, who cooperates in securing the safety of the city."

"All the good are friends of one another."

"We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say."

"No evil is honorable; but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil."

"A bad feeling is a commotion of the mind repugnant to reason, and against nature."

"That which exercises reason is more excellent than that which does not exercise reason; there is nothing more excellent than the universe, therefore the universe exercises reason."

"If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?"

"The best exponent of anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was Zeno (342-267 or 270 B.C.), from Kition, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, who distinctly opposed his conception of a free community without government to the state-Utopia of Plato. He repudiated the omnipotence of the State, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual — remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct — that of sociability. When men are reasonable enough to follow their natural instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute the Cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public worship, and use no money — free gifts taking the place of the exchanges. Unfortunately, the writings of Zeno have not reached us and are only known through fragmentary quotations. However, the fact that his very wording is similar to the wording now in use, shows how deeply is laid the tendency of human nature of which he was the mouthpiece."

"Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν"

"Nothing unattested do I sing."

"A big book is a big misfortune."

"The Graces, three erewhile, are three no more; A fourth is come with perfume sprinkled o'er. 'Tis Berenice blest and fair; were she Away the Graces would no Graces be."

"Set a thief to catch a thief."

"O Charidas, what of the under world? Great darkness. And what of the resurrection? A lie. And Pluto? A fable; we perish utterly."

"Here sleeps Saon, of Acanthus, son of Dicon, a holy sleep: say not that the good die."

"Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore; The Muses are ten, the Graces are four; Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face; She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace."

"Εἰπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον ἐς δέ με δάκρυ ἤγαγεν ἐμνήσθην δ᾿ ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι ἠέλιον λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν. ..."

"[...] ὅσσα τ' ὀδόντωνἔνδοθι νείαιράν τ' εἰς ἀχάριστον ἔδυ, καὶ τῶν οὐδὲν ἔμεινεν ἐς αὔριον· ὅσσα δ' ἀκουαῖς εἰσεθέμην, ἔτι μοι μοῦνα πάρεστι τάδε."

"His blend of sensitivity and detachment, elegance, wit, and learning, had a profound influence on later Roman poets, especially Catullus, Ovid, and Propertius (the last thought of himself as the Roman Callimachus), and through them on the whole European literary tradition."

"The most outstanding intellect of this generation, the greatest poet that the Hellenistic age produced, and historically one of the most important figures in the development of Graeco-Roman (and hence European) literature."

"Here lies Megistias, who died When the Medes crossed Spercheius' tide. A great seer, yet he scorned to save Himself, and shared the Spartans' grave."

"ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι. (wrongly attributed)"

"Ō xein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti tē(i)de keimetha tois keinōn rhēmasi peithomenoi."

"… zographian poiesin sioposan prosagoreuei, ten de poiesin zographian lalousan."

"… ζωγραφίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει [sc. ὁ Σιμωνίδης], τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσαν."

"We did not flinch but gave our lives to save Greece when her fate hung on a razor's edge."

"Anankei d' oude theoi makhontai."

"ἀνάγκῃ δ᾽ οὐδὲ θεοὶ μάχονται."