A Quote by Socrates

I prefer to be refuted than to refute, for it is a greater good for oneself to be freed from the greatest evil than to free another.

Socrates

Quote Topics

Another Evil Free Freed Good Greater Greater Good Greatest Oneself Prefer Refute Than

Quote Author

Socrates
Greek - Philosopher
469 BC - 399 BC

Just as there is no action weaker or more unreasonable than to submit one's judgment to another's, where there is no advantage to oneself, so also there is nothing greater or wiser than to place oneself unquestioningly under God's judgment by believing in every word He speaks.

Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. .

Aristotle

No greater evil can a man endure Than a bad wife, nor find a greater good Than one both good and wise; and each man speaks As judging by the experience of his life.

Sophocles

There is no greater sin than desire, No greater curse than discontent, No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself. Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

Laozi

But what is the greatest evil? If you are going to epitomize evil, what is it? Is it the bomb? The greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worse part of oneself.

Patrick McGoohan

Facts, when combined with ideas, constitute the greatest force in the world. They are greater than armaments, greater than finance, greater than science, business and law because they constitute the common denominator of all of them.

Carl W. Ackerman

For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

Viktor E. Frankl

In the twentieth century, men -- all of us -- find themselves compelled to commit or condone evil for the sake of preventing an evil believed to be greater. And the tragedy is that we do not know whether the evil we condone will not in the end be greater than the evil we seek to avert-- or be identified with.

Emil Fackenheim

As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand.

Bruce Lee

There is no greater love than this. There is no greater gift that can ever be given. To be willing to die, so another might live -- there is no greater lover than this.

Steven Curtis Chapman

The presence of the blacks is the greatest evil that threatens the United States. They increase, in the Gulf States, faster than do the whites. They cannot be kept for ever in slavery, since the tendencies of the modern world run strongly the other way. They cannot be absorbed into the white population, for the whites will not intermarry with them, not even in the North where they have been free for two generations. Once freed, they would be more dangerous than now, because they would not long submit to be debarred from political rights. A terrible struggle would ensue.

James Bryce

Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.

Andrzej Sapkowski

When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands the unfitness of the means. The ulterior motives with which youabsorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.... Evil is whatever distracts. Evil knows of the Good, but Good does not know of Evil. Knowledge of oneself is something only Evil has. One means that Evil has is the dialogue.... One cannot pay Evil in installments--and one always keeps on trying to.

Franz Kafka

By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.

Robert Macfarlane

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.