Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
Search Quotes Search Sages Search Chapters

Isocrates Ἰσοκράτης

436 – 338 BCE

Greece’s most famous orator, rhetoric and philosophy school founder, teacher of kings and other teachers; Isocrates promoted a vision of all the Greek city-states being part of one common nation. This established a foundation for the Panhellenic union, the defeat of Persia, Alexander’s unification and conquests. Cicero compared the school he founded to a Trojan Horse because the ideals it promoted were so able to subtly and effectively infiltrate the culture and politics of the times. Historians attribute much of the famous integrity, honesty, and truthfulness of ancient Athens to Isocrates. A strong voice for peace, he stressed how peace doesn’t create more pain and suffering for populations while war creates so many disasters. Criticized by Plato but praised by Socrates, Isocrates became an important influence on establishing liberal arts education.

Lineages
Greek Politicians

Eras

Unlisted Sources

353 BCE

Ad Demonicum

Advice to Nicocles

Areopagiticus

Panathenaicus

Works

Quotes by Isocrates (17 quotes)

“The rich have become so unsocial, those who own property had rather throw their possessions into the sea than lend aid to the needy, while those who are in power circumstance would less gladly find a treasure than seize the possessions of the rich.”

from Works

Comments: Click to comment

“True democracy is the renunciation of the struggle for power.”

Themes: Power Democracy

Comments: Click to comment

“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”

from Advice to Nicocles

Comments: Click to comment

“Of all our possessions, wisdom alone is immortal.”

from Ad Demonicum

Comments: Click to comment

“Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs, therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity or undue depression in adversity.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Absolute power is universally coveted, though all know that an absolute ruler has an anxious life and usually a violent death.”

Themes: Power

Comments: Click to comment

“We all sit around complaining that we have never been worse governed... but really listen only to those who support our desires... the masses like better a person who flatters them than one who really benefits them.”

Comments: Click to comment

“[citizens] considered poverty among their fellow citizens as their own disgrace and measured their well-being not by being able to outdo each other, but by the absence of want among the whole people”

Comments: Click to comment

“it is as reprehensible to hear a profitable saying and not grasp it as to be offered a good gift by one's friends and not accept it.”

Comments: Click to comment

“It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement.”

Comments: Click to comment

“It was the principle of this Court that deterrent laws, however strict, are useless without positive moral discipline; that the happiness of citizens depends, not on having the walls of their porticoes covered with laws, but on having justice in their hearts.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Political 'equality' has been understood in two senses: as meaning either that all are to share absolutely alike, or that every man is to receive his due. Our ancestors preferred that 'equality' which does not efface the distinction between merit and worthlessness.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Always when you are about to say anything, first weigh it in your mind; for with many the tongue outruns the thought. Let there be but two occasions for speech — when the subject is one which you thoroughly know and when it one on which you are compelled to speak. On these occasions alone is speech better than silence; on all others, it is better to be silent than to speak.”

Comments: Click to comment

“We sit around in our shops denouncing the present order but we perceive that even badly constituted democracies are responsible for fewer disasters than oligarchies. But Athens ruined itself by carrying to excess the principles of liberty and equality, by training the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and license to do what they pleased as happiness.”

from Areopagiticus

Comments: Click to comment

“Whenever you deliberate on the business of the state, you distrust and dislike men of superior intelligence and cultivate instead the most depraved of the orators who come before you; you prefer those who are witless to those who are wise, those who dole out the public money to those who perform public services at their own expense.”

from Areopagiticus

Comments: Click to comment

“When I was a boy, wealth was regarded as a thing so secure and admirable that almost everyone affected to own more property than possessed... now a man has to be ready to defend himself against being rich as if it were the worst of crimes.”

from 353 BCE

Themes: Wealth Crime

Comments: Click to comment

“Whom, then, do I call educated?... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not unduly overcome by their misfortunes”

from Panathenaicus

Comments: Click to comment

Quotes about Isocrates (2 quotes)

“What we may call the idea of Isocrates—the idea of a great union of the Greek states in Europe to dominate the Eastern world”

H. G. Wells 1866 – 1946 CE
A father of science fiction and One World Government apostle
from Outline of History

Comments: Click to comment

“The fact that Isocrates was the first to declare that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the first to urge giving up war as a policy and substituting good will for armed forces, sets him so far in advance of his age that on that score alone, he could not be forgotten.”

Edith Hamilton 1867 – 1963 CE
from Echo of Greece​, 1957

Comments: Click to comment

Comments (0)