ARISTOTLE - The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica)

The Works of Aristotle:  Rhetoric (Rhetorica)

Quotes for Discussion

Accordingly, all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves, and to attack others. Ordinary people do this either at random or through practice and from acquired habit.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 1, Great Books Volume 9, pg 593

This is sound law and custom. It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity – one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 1, Great Books Volume 9, pg 593

Rhetoric is useful (1) because things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites, so that if the decisions of judges are not what they out to be, the defeat must be due to the speakers themselves, and they must be blamed accordingly. Moreover (2) before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct. Here, then, we must use modes of persuasion and argument, notions possessed by everybody, as we observed in the Topics when dealing with the way to handle a popular audience.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 1, Great Books Volume 9, pg 594

And if it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against all good things except virtue, and above all against the things that are most useful, as strength, health, wealth, generalship. A man can confer the greatest of benefits by a right use of these, and inflict the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 1, Great Books Volume 9, pg 594

A probability is a thing that usually happens not, however as some definitions would suggest, anything whatever that usually happens but only if it belongs to the class of the contingent or variable. It bears the same relation to that in respect of which it is probable as the universal bears to the particular.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 2, Great Books Volume 9, pg 597

It may be said that every individual man and all men in common aim at a certain end which determines what they choose and what they avoid. This end, to sum it up briefly, is happiness and its constituents.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 5, Great Books Volume 9, pg.600

Good also are the things by which we shall gratify our friends or annoy our enemies; and the things chosen by those whom we admire; and the things for which we are fitted by nature or experience, since we think we shall succeed more easily in these: and those in which no worthless man can succeed, for such thins bring greater praise; and those which we do in fact desire, for what we desire is taken to be not only pleasant but also better.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 6, Great Books Volume 9, pg.604

Noble also are those actions whose advantage may be enjoyed after death, as opposed to those whose advantage is enjoyed during one’s lifetime; for the latter are more likely to be for one’s own sake only. Also, all actions done for the sake of others, since less than other actions are done for one’s own sake; and all successes which benefit others and not oneself, and services done to one’s benefactors, for this is just; and good deed generally, since they are not directed to one’s own profit.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 9, Great Books Volume 9, pg.609

So are the distinctive qualities of a particular people, and the symbols of what it specially admires, like long hair in Sparta, where this is a mark of a free man, as it is not easy to perform any menial task when one’s hair is long. Again it is noble not to practice any sordid craft, since it is the mark of a free man not to live at another’s beck and call.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 9, Great Books Volume 9, pg.610

… good fathers are likely to have good sons, and good training is likely to produce good character. Hence it is only when a man has already done something that we bestow encomiums upon him. Yet the actual deeds are evidence of the doer’s character; even if a man has not actually done a given good things, we shall bestow praise on him, if we are sure that he is the sort of man who would do it.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 9, Great Books Volume 9, pg.610

You may feel that even if you are found out you can stave off a trial, or have it postponed, or corrupt your judges; or that even if you are sentences you can avoid paying damages, or can at least postpone doing so for a long time; or that you are so badly off that you will have nothing to lose. You may feel that the gain to be got by wrong-doing is great or certain or immediate, and that the penalty is small or uncertain or distant. It may be that the advantage to be gained is greater than any possible retribution; as in the case of despotic power, according to the popular view.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 12, Great Books Volume 9, pg.616

In order to be wrongs, a man must (1) suffer actual harm, (2) suffer it against his will. The various possible forms of harm are clearly explained by our previous separate discussion of goods and evils

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 13, Great Books Volume 9, pg.618

Now it often happens that the man will admit an act, but will not admit the prosecutor’s label for the act nor the facts which that label implies. He will admit that he took a thing but not that he “stole” it;

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book I, chapter 13, Great Books Volume 9, pg.618

There are three kinds of slighting – contempt, spite, and insolence (1) contempt is one kind of slighting; you feel contempt for what you consider unimportant, and it is just such things that you slight, (2) Spite is another kind; it is thwarting another man’s wishes, not to get something yourself but to prevent his getting it. The slight arises just from the fact that you do not aim at something for yourself; clearly you do not think that he can do you harm, for then you would be afraid of him instead of slighting him, not yet that he can do you any good worth mentioning, for then you would be anxious to make friends with him. (3) Insolence is also a form of slighting, since it consists in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to yourself, or because anything has happened to yourself, but simply for the pleasure involved (Retaliationin not insolence, but vengeance.)

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 2, chapter 2, Great Books Volume 9, pg.623

Here we have a Maxim; add the reason or explanation, and the whole thing is an Enthymem; thus

It makes them idle; and therewith they earn Ill-will and jealously throughout the city.

Again,

There is no man in all things prosperous,

And

There is no man among us all is free,

Are maxims; but the latter, taken with what follows it, is an Enthymeme –

For all are slaves of money or of chance.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 2, chapter 21, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.642

…if a man happens to have had neighbours or bad children, he will agree with any one who tells hi, “Nothing is more annoying than having neighbours” or “nothing is more foolish than to be the parent of children.” The e orator has therefore to guess the subjects on which his hearers really hold views already, and what those views are, and then must express as general truths, these same views on these same subjects. This is one advantage of using maxims. There is another which is more important – in invests a speech with moral character. There is a moral character in every speech in which the moral purpose is conspicuous; and maxims always produce this effect, because the utterance of them amounts to a general declaration of moral principles; so that if the maxim are sound, they display the speaker as a man of sound moral character, So much for the Maxim – its nature, varieties, proper use, and advantages.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 2, chapter 21, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.643

The special facts here needed are those that are true of Achilles along; such facts as that he slew Hector, the bravest of the Trojans, and Cycnus the invulnerable, who prevented all the Greeks from landing, and again that he was the youngest man who joined the expedition, and was not bound by oath to join it, and so on.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 2, chapter 22, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.644

Another is the argument from consequence. In the Alexander, for instance, it is argued that Paris must have had a lofty disposition, since he despised society and lived by himself on Mount Ida: because lofty people do this kind of thing, therefore Paris too, we are to suppose, had a lofty soul. Of, if a man dresses fashionable and roams around at night he is a rake, since that is the way rakes behave.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 2, chapter 24, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.650

In making a speech one must study three points; first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the style, or language, to be used; third, the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 3, chapter 1, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.653

Our next subject will be the style of expression. For it is not enough to know what we ought to say; we must also say it as we ought; much help is thus afforded towards producing the right impression of speech.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 3, chapter 1, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.653

The right thing in speaking really is that we should be satisfied not to annoy our hearers, without trying to delight them; we ought in fairness to fight our case with no help beyond the bare facts; nothing, therefore, should matter except the proof of those facts. Still, as has been already said, other things affect the result considerably, owing to the defects of our hearers.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 3, chapter 1, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.654

The arts of language cannot help having a small but real importance, whatever it is we have to expound to others; the way in which a thing is said does affect its intelligibility. Not, however, so much importance as people think. All such arts are fanciful and meant to charm the hearer. Nobody uses fine language when teaching geometry.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 3, chapter 1, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.654

(Take as an example the introduction to the Helen of Isocrates - there is nothing in common between the 'eristics' and Helen.) And here, even if you travel far from your subject, it is fitting rather than that there should be sameness in the entire speech.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 3, chapter 14, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.668

The appeal to the hearer aims at securing his goodwill or at arousing his resentment, or sometimes at gaining his serious attention to the case or even at distracting it - for gaining it is not always an advantage and speakers will often for that reason try to make him laugh.
You may use any means you choose to make your hearer receptive; among others giving him a good impression of your character which always helps to secure his attention. He will be ready to attend to anything that touches himself and to anything that is important surprising or agreeable; and you should accordingly convey to him the impression that what you have to say is of this nature. If you wish to distract his attention you should imply that the subject does not affect him or is trivial or disagreeable. But observe, all this has nothing to do with the speech itself. It merely has to do with the weak-minded tendency of the hearer to listen to what is beside the point. When this tendency is absent no introduction is wanted beyond a summary statement of your subject to put a sort of head on the main body of your speech.

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Book 3, chapter 14, Great Books Volume 9,  pg.669

Vocabulary – Rhetoric

The Works of Aristotle, Rhetoric (Rhetorica), Great Books Volume 9

divarication, pg 648, a difference of opinion, a divergence of opinion

enthymeme, pg 596

An enthymeme (Greek:ἐνθύμημα, enthumēma), in its modern sense, is an informally stated syllogism (a three-part deductive argument) with an unstatedassumption that must be true for the premises to lead to the conclusion.

An informally stated syllogism with an implied premise.

syllogism, pg 596

a form of argument that contains a major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion.

A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion.

The Major Premise of a syllogism contains the predicate of the conclusion and the middle term.

ARISTOTLE - The Works of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

 The Works of Aristotle:

Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea),

Book V


Quotes for Discussion


Now men pray for and pursue these things; but they should not, but should pray that the things that are good absolutely may also be good for them, and should choose the things that are good for them. The unjust man does not always choose the greater, but also the less – in the case of things bad absolutely; but because the lesser evil is itself thought to be in a sense good and graspingness is directed at the good, therefore he is thought to be grasping. And he is unfair; for this contains and is common to both.
The Works of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea), Book V, #1, Great Books Volume 9, pg 376

And the law bids us do both the acts of a brave man (e.g. not to desert nor post nor take to flight nor throw away our arms), and those of a temperate man (e.g. not to commit adultery nor to gratify one’s lust) and those of a good-tempered man (e.g. not to strike another nor to speak evil), and similarly with regard to the other virtues and forms of wickedness, commanding some acts and forbidding others; and the rightly framed law does this rightly, and the hastily conceived one less well. This form of justice, then, is complete virtue, but not absolutely, but in relation to our neighbour.
The Works of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea), Book V, #1, Great Books Volume 9, pg 377

Further, this is plain from the fact that awards should be according to merit’; for all men agree that what is just in distribution must be according to merit in some sense, though they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with the status of freeman, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or with noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.
The Works of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea), Book V, #3, Great Books Volume 9, pg 378

For it makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man or a bad man a good one, nor whether it is a good or a bad man that has committed adultery; the law looks only to the distinctive character of the injury, and treats the parties as equal, if one is in the wrong and the other is being wronged, and if one inflicted injury and the other has received it. Therefore, this kind of injustice being an inequality, the judge tries to equalize it; for in the case also in which one has received and thither has inflicted a wound, or one has slain and the other has been slain, the suffering and the action have been unequally distributed; but the judge tried to equalize by means of the penalty, taking away from the gain of the assailant.
The Works of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea), Book V, #4, Great Books Volume 9, pg 378

All goods must therefore be measured by some one thing, as we said before. Now this unit is in truth demand, which holds all things together (for it men did not need one another’s good at all, or did not need them equally, there would be either no exchange or not the same exchange); but money has become by convention a sort of representative of demand; and this is why it has the name ‘money’ because it exists not by nature but by law and it is in our power to change it and make it useless.
The Works of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea), Book V, #5, Great Books Volume 9, pg 381

There must then be a unit, and that fixed by agreement (for which reason it is called money); for it is this that makes all things commensurate, since all things are measured by money. Let A be a house, B ten minae, C a bed. A is half of B, if the house is worth five minae or equal to them; the bed, C, is a tenth of B; it is plain, then, how many beds are equal to a house, viz. five.
The Works of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea), Book V, #5, Great Books Volume 9, pg 381

… the law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not expressly permit, it forbids.
The Works of Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea), Book V, #11, Great Books Volume 9, pg 386

Vocabulary

The Works of Artistotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Great Books Volume 9

Clandestine, pg 378

adj. Kept or done in secret, often in order to conceal an illicit or improper purpose.

Viz., pg 381

also rendered viz without a full stop) and the adverb videlicet are used as synonyms for "namely", "that is to say", and "as follows".

PLATO: The Dialogues of Plato: Gorgias

The Dialogues of Plato: Gorgias

Quotes for Discussion

Polus:… there are many arts among mankind which are experimental, and have their origin in experience, for experience makes the days of men to proceed according to art, and inexperience, according to change, and different persons in different ways are proficient in different arts, and the best person in the best arts. And our friend Gorgias is one of the best, and the art in which he is a proficient is the noblest.

The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 253

Socrates: ... you know any other effect of rhetoric over and above that of producing persuasion?

The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 255

Socrates: … Does he who teaches anything persuade men of that which he teaches or not?
The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 255

Socrates: For at every election he ought to be chosen who is most skilled; and , again, when wall shave to be built or harbours or docks to be constructed, not the rhetorician, but the master workman will advise; or when generals have to be chose and an order of battle arranged, or a proposition taken, then the military will advise and not the rhetoricians; what do you say, Gorgias. Since you profess to be a rhetorician and a maker of rhetoricians, I cannot do better than learn the nature of your art from you. And here let me assure you that I have your interest in view as well as my own.
The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 256

Gorgias: You must have heard, I think, that the docks and the walls of the Athenians and the plan of the harbour were devised in accordance with the counsels, partly of Themistocles, and partly of Pericles, and not at the suggestion of the builders.

Socrates: Such is the tradition, Gorgias, about Themistocles; and I myself heard the speech of Pericles when he advised us about the middle wall.

Gorgias: And I say that if a rhetorician and a physician were to go to any city, and had there to argue in the Ecclesia or any other assembly as to which of them should be elected state physician, the physician would have no chance; but he who could speak would be chosen if he wished; and in a contest which a man of any other profession the rhetorician more than any one would have the power of getting himself chosen, for he can speak more persuasively to the multitude than any of them and on any subject. Such is the nature and power of the art of rhetoric! And yet, Socrates, rhetoric should be used like any other competitive art, not against everybody – the rhetorician ought not to abuse his strength any more than a pugilist or pancratiast or other master of fence; because he has powers which are more than a match either for friend or enemy, he ought not therefore to strike or stab, or slay his friends.

The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 257

Socrates: … the rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know?

Gorgias: Yes, Socrates, and is not this a great comfort? – not to have learned the other arts but the art of rhetoric only, and yet to be in no way inferior to the professors of them?

The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 258

Socrates: In my opinion then, Gorgias, the whole of which rhetoric is a part is not an art at all, but the habit of a bold and ready wit, which knows how to manage mankind; this habit I sum up under the word “flattery”; and it appears to me to have many other parts, …
The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 260

Socrates:Rhetoric, according to my view is the ghost or counterfeit of a part of politics.
The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 260

Socrates:The soul and body being two, have two arts corresponding to them; there is the art of politics attending on the soul; and another art attending on the body of which I know no single name, but which many be describe as having two divisions, one of them gymnastic, and the other medicine. And in politics there is a legislative part, which answers to gymnastic, as justice does to medicine; and the two parts run into one another, justice having to do with the same subject as legislation, and medicine with the same subject as gymnastic, but with a difference.
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 261

Socrates: cookery simulates the disguise of medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which the children were the judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death. A flattery I deem this to be an of an ignoble sort, Polus, for to you I am now addressing myself, because it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. An art I do not call it, but only an experience, because it is unable to explain or to give a reason of the nature of its own applications.
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 261

Socrates: …if at your age, Polus, you cannot remember, what will you do by-and-by, when you get older?
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 262

Socrates: Yes, indeed, Polus, that is my doctrine; the men and women who are gentle and good are also happy, as I maintain, and the unjust and evil are miserable.
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 264

Socrates: The I say that neither of them will be happier than the other – neither he who unjustly acquires a tyranny, nor he who suffers in the attempt, for of two miserables one cannot be the happier, but that he who escapes and becomes a tyrant is the more miserable of the tow. Do you laugh, Polus? Well, this is a new kind of refutation – when anyone sys anything instead of refuting him to laugh at him.
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 266

Socrates: Then the art of money-making frees a man from poverty; medicine from disease; and justice from intemperance and injustice?

… Which, then, is the best of these three? …

Polus: Justice, Socrates, far excels the two others.
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 269

Socrates: And would he be the happier man in his bodily condition, who is healed, or who never was out of health?

Polus: Clearly he who was never out of health.

Socrates: Yes; for happiness surely does not consist in being delivered from evils, but in never having had them.
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7,  pg 269

Callicles:And people of this sort, when they betake themselves to politics or business, are as ridiculous as I imagine the politicians to be, when they make their appearance in the arena of philosophy. For as Euripides says,

Every man shines in that and pursues that, and devotes the greatest portion of the day to that in which he most excels.

But anything in which he is inferior, he avoids and depreciates, and praises the opposite from partiality to himself and because he thinks that he will thus praise himself.
The Dialogues of Plato, Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 272

Callicles: This man will never cease talking nonsense. At your age, Socrates, are you not ashamed to be catching at words and chuckling over some verbal slip? Do you not see – have I not told you already, that by superior I mean better; do you imagine me to say, that if a rabble of slaves and nondescripts, who are of no use except perhaps for their physical strength, get together, their ipsissima verba are laws?
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 274

Socrates: Well, but do you admit that the wiser is the better? Answer “Yes” or “No.”
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 275

Socrates: Well, but people say that “a tale should have a head and not break off in the middle,” and I should not like to have the argument going about without a head; please then to go on a little longer, and put the head on.

Callicles: How tyrannical you are, Socrates! I wish that you and your argument would rest, or that you would get someone else to argue with you.

Socrates: But who else is willing? I want to finish the argument.

Callicles: Cannot you finish without my help, either talking straight on, or questioning and answering yourself?
The Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 283

Socrates: This appears to be the aim which a man out to have, and towards which he out to direct all the energies both of himself and of the state, acting so that he may have temperance and justice present with him and be happy, not suffering his lusts to be unrestrained and in the never-ending desire to satisfy them leading a robber’s life. Such a one is the friend neither of God nor man, for he is incapable of communion, and he who is incapable of communion is also incapable of friendship.
Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 284

Socrates: And if you despise the swimmers, I will tell you of another and greater art, the art of the pilot, who not only saves the souls of men, but also their bodies and properties from the extremity of danger, just like rhetoric. Yet his art is modest and unpresuming; it has no airs or pretences of doing anything extraordinary, and in return for the same salvation which is given by the pleader, demands only two obols, if he brings us from Aegina to Athens, or from the longer voyage from Pontus or Egypt, and the utmost two drachmae, when he has saved, as I was just now saying, the passenger and his wife and children and goods, and safely disembarked them at the Piraeus – this the payment which he asked in return for so great a boon; and he who is the master of the art, and has done all this , gets out and walked about on the sea-shore by his ships in an unassuming way. For he is able to reflect and is aware that he cannot tell which of his fellow-passengers he has benefited, and which of them he has injured in not allowing them to be drowned. He knows that they are just the same when he as disembarked them as when they embarked, and not a whit better either in their bodies or in their souls; and he considers that if a man who is afflicted by great and incurable bodily diseases is only to be pitied for having escaped, and is in no way benefited by him in having been saved from curable diseases, not of the body, but of the soul, which is the more valuable part of him; neither is life worth having nor of any profit to the bad man, whether he be delivered from the sea, or the law-courts, or any other devourer – and so he reflects that such a one had better not live, for he cannot live well.

And this is the reason why the pilot, although he is our savior, is not usually conceited, any more than the engineer, who is not at all behind either the general, or the pilot, or any one else, in his saving power, for he sometimes saves the whole cities. Is there any comparison between him and the pleader? And if he were to talk, Callicles, in your grandiose style, he would bury your under a mountain of words, declaring and insisting that we ought all of us to be engine-makers, and that no other profession is worth thinking about; he would have plenty to say. Nevertheless you despise him and his art, and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and the others whom I was just not mentioning? I know that you will say, “I am better, and better born.” But if the better is not what I saw, and virtue consists only in a man saving himself and his, whatever may be his character, then your censure of the engine-maker, and of the physician, and of the other arts of salvation, is ridiculous. O my friend! I wasn’t you to see that the noble and the good may possibly be something different from saying and being saved – May not he who is truly a man cease to care about living a certain time? He knows, as women say, that no man can escape fate, and therefore he is not fond of life.; he leaves all that with God, and considers in what way he can best sped his appointed term – whether by assimilating himself to the constitution under which he lives, as you at this moment have to consider how you may become as like as possible to the Athenian people, if you mean to be in their good graces, and to have power in the state; whereas I want you to think and see whether this is the for the interest of either of us – I would not have us risk that which is dearest on the acquisition of this power, like the Thessalian enchantresses, who as they say, bring down the moon from heaven at the risk of their own perdition.
Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 286

Socrates: Can anything be more irrational, my friends, than this? You, Callicles, compel me to be a mob-orator, because you will not answer.

Callicles: An you are the man who cannot speak unless there is someone to answer?

Socrates: I suppose that I can; just now, at any rate, the speeches which I am making are long enough because you refuse to answer me. But I adjure you by the god of friendship, my good sir, do tell me whether there does not appear to you to be a great inconsistency in saying that you have made a man good, and then blaming him for being bad?

Callicles: Yes, it appears so to me.

Socrates: Do you never hear our professors of education speaking in this inconsistent manner?
Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 290

Socrates: Can anything be more irrational, my friends, than this? You, Callicles, compel me to be a mob-orator, because you will not answer.

Callicles: An you are the man who cannot speak unless there is someone to answer?
Socrates: I suppose that I can; just now, at any rate, the speeches which I am making are long enough because you refuse to answer me. But I adjure you by the god of friendship, my good sir, do tell me whether there does not appear to you to be a great inconsistency in saying that you have made a man good, and then blaming him for being bad?

Callicles: Yes, it appears so to me.

Socrates: Do you never hear our professors of education speaking in this inconsistent manner?
Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 290

Socrates: Then Pluto and the authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus, and said that the souls found their way to the wrong places. Zeus said: “I shall put a stop to this; the judgments are not well given, because the persons who are judged have their clothes on; for they are alive; and there are many who, having evil souls, are appareled in fair bodies, or encased in wealth or rank, and when the day of judgment arrives, numerous witnesses come forward and testify on their behalf that they have lived righteously. The judges are awed by them, and they themselves too have their clothes on when judging; their eyes and ears and their whole bodies are interposed as a veil before their own souls. All of this is a hindrance to them; there are the clothes of the judges and the clothes of the judged – What is to be done? I will tell you; - In the first place, I will deprive men of the foreknowledge of death, which they possess at present; this power which they have Prometheus has already received my orders to take from them; in the second place; they shall be entirely stripped before they are judged, for they shall be judged when they are dead; and the judge too shall be naked, that is to say, dead- he with his naked soul shall pierce into the other naked souls; and they shall die suddenly and be deprived of all their kindred, and leave their brave attire strewn upon the earth – conducted in this manner the judgment will be just.
Dialogues of Plato,  Gorgias, Great Books Volume 7, pg 292

Vocabulary – Dialogues of Plato: Gorgias
Great Books Volume 7

Ipsissima verba, pg 274
Latin for "the very words," is a legal term referring to material, usually established authority, that a writer or speaker is quoting

The very words, as of a quote.

Pilot, pg 286
Archaic helmsman; a person licensed to direct ships into or out of a harbor or through difficult waters. a person qualified to operate the controls of ...