Philosophical Dialogue Quotes

The Bhagavadgita is a gospel of non-co-operation between the forces of darkness and those of light.

The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries.

Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another.

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.

The content of the dialogue with 'the Other' is a content that indicates that man's horizons are infinitely bright, that death is in fact, well, as Thomas Vaughn put it, 'the body is the placenta of the soul'

The Bhagavad-Gita has a profound influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by actions.

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

It always struck me as pretty cool that people who changed the world often knew each other. After reading them separately, hearing that David Hume and Adam Smith were friends made sense.

If only our great thinkers could learn to talk, and our great talkers could learn to think.

I conceived 'All Is Song' as a modernised, loosely interpreted version of Socrates's life.

Socrates, after all, could be an intensely annoying man, all the time questioning passers-by until they became exasperated.

Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,--a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the reproduction in finer form, of all our havings.

'Matisse and Picasso' is a little like Plato after Socrates. Socrates only taught in words. He didn't write. And after that, you had Plato and Aristotle to write about what he had said. I write about them because they didn't write about them.

I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition.

The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play

Such, Echecrates, was the end of our comrade, who was, we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man.

The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student and teacher here is not one of submission, but of a contest for truth.

I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.