Browse 12 quotations connecting Plato with Responsibility, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Responsibility in these eight passages is not merely a synonym for being virtuous or obeying rules. Apology puts Socrates before an Athenian jury: he says that, even if permitted to go free on condition that he stop questioning others, he would continue what he understands as his divine duty to philosophy. The line about obeying God belongs to that specific trial speech; it is not a general instruction to reject every civic obligation. In Crito, the same dramatic figure faces a different test in prison. He and Crito return to their earlier agreement that injury does not authorize retaliation, then ask whether he should act on principles he accepts when the penalty is personal. The dialogue's imagined address by the Laws complicates the issue further. Accountability here requires giving reasons for conduct under pressure, not merely asserting that one's preferred choice is right.
The Republic considers responsibility at two different scales, and these should not be collapsed into a modern workplace slogan. In Book I, Socrates disputes Polemarchus's claim that justice licenses helping friends and harming enemies, testing what a just person's conduct can do to others. In Book IV, the proposal that each person should do their own work is an argument about differentiated functions within an imagined hierarchical city and the analogy with an ordered soul. It is not evidence that people must remain in their present occupations or social positions. In Laws Book V, another dramatic speaker—the Athenian Stranger, not Socrates—argues that adults should follow their own admonitions while educating the young. This links accountability to example and civic formation within his proposed legislation, rather than demonstrating a scientific rule about parenting.
Two remaining passages widen the question to intellectual responsibility and the judgment of danger. In Phaedo, Socrates asks Simmias and Cebes to attend to the truth of his reasoning rather than to his personal authority, and to challenge him if the argument fails. Their dispute concerns whether the soul survives death; the invitation to criticize is not proof of that metaphysical claim. In Laches, Nicias defines courage through knowledge of what inspires fear or confidence, but Laches objects and Socrates continues probing the definition without securing a final agreement. That makes Nicias's claim a disputed proposal, not Plato's official instruction for taking risks. Across all six dialogues, read responsibility as a question about commitments, consequences, truthful disagreement and accountable conduct, while consulting the speaker, work and original translation for each quotation.
Sources represented here include Laws, The Republic, Crito.
“I shall obey God rather than you.”
Socrates presents moral and philosophical duty as more binding than compliance with pressure from political authority.
Apology, Jowett translation; Socrates says he would continue practicing philosophy even if acquittal were conditioned on silence.
“Then we must do no wrong?”
The brief question tests whether the previously accepted principle against wrongdoing still holds when obedience to it becomes personally costly.
Crito, Benjamin Jowett translation; Socrates is testing the moral premises that will govern his decision about escaping prison.
“Ought a man to do what he admits to be right, or ought he to betray the right?”
Socrates asks whether acting on one’s considered judgment about right and wrong should be set aside when the costs are severe. In the prison conversation, the question tests whether escaping a wrongful sentence can be justified under the principles he and Crito have accepted.
Crito, Socrates questioning Crito during the prison discussion after establishing a rule against retaliation; Benjamin Jowett English translation, Project Gutenberg #1657. The sentence begins after Socrates says he will put the next point as a question. The question is not an unqualified defense of obedience to every law; the dialogue stages an argument about obligations to the city.
“A simple thing enough; just what is commonly said, that a man should be temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions.”
Socrates describes moderation as governing one’s own appetite and impulses rather than merely exercising power over other people. Callicles immediately challenges this view and praises satisfying desires without restraint. The passage is an argument in a dispute about happiness and the good life, not modern evidence about psychology or a claim that feelings should be suppressed.
Plato, Gorgias, approximately Stephanus 491d–e, Socrates answering Callicles’s question about ruling oneself. Callicles promptly disputes the value of temperance. Full sentence in Benjamin Jowett’s English translation, Project Gutenberg #1672, within the Gorgias dialogue proper (not Jowett’s introductory essay). Socrates is the local dramatic speaker; the line is not Plato’s autobiographical speech. An ancient ethical argument, not experimental mental-health evidence.
“I mean to say, Laches, that courage is the knowledge of that which inspires fear or confidence in war, or in anything.”
Nicias suggests that courageous judgment depends on understanding when danger deserves fear and when there is reason for confidence. Laches disputes the link between courage and specialized knowledge, and Socrates presses Nicias on what knowledge of future good or evil entails. It remains a hypothesis under examination, not a definitive philosophical verdict.
Laches, around Stephanus 194e–195a, Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1584. Nicias speaks to Laches after Socrates invites an alternative to Laches’s endurance account; subsequent questioning probes the scope of knowledge about fear and hope and leaves the inquiry unresolved. The local dramatic speaker is Nicias, not Plato personally. The wording occurs in the dialogue body, not Jowett’s introduction.
“Now I mean by education that training which is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children;”
In this account, education forms early habits of feeling and response so that they can later accord with reason. It is an account of moral formation within the dialogue, not an empirical generalization about childhood.
Laws, Book II, Benjamin Jowett English translation. The Athenian Stranger opens a longer definition linking early instincts and pleasure or pain with later rational understanding; this quotation preserves the opening clause and its original semicolon.
“When anger and fear, and pleasure and pain, and jealousies and desires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any harm or not—I call all this injustice.”
The Athenian Stranger defines injustice in terms of uncontrolled impulses ruling a person, even before judging the harmful consequences of a particular act. He is distinguishing a disordered character from the later task of classifying and punishing wrongdoing under civic law.
Laws, Book IX, the Athenian Stranger replying to Cleinias while designing criminal laws for an imagined city. Benjamin Jowett English translation, Project Gutenberg #1750. This is the concluding clause of a longer first-person definition that begins “And now I can define to you clearly”; preserving it as an extract does not make it a remark by Socrates (who is absent from Laws).
“The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own admonitions in practice.”
The Athenian Stranger argues that adults teach ethical habits through consistent conduct as much as through instruction. Within the proposed city’s civic code, self-discipline and example help to shape a life shared across generations; this is not a randomized modern study of parenting.
Plato, Laws, Book V, the Athenian Stranger giving an extended civic-ethical exhortation to Cleinias and Megillus; Benjamin Jowett English, Gutenberg #1750. This is dialogue speech, not commentary in Jowett’s introduction. The local dramatic voice is the Athenian Stranger, not Socrates or Plato personally.
“And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and like the bee, leave my sting in you before I die.”
Facing death, Socrates asks his friends to challenge the argument he is defending if they find it mistaken. His emphasis is on testing whether a claim is true rather than accepting it because of the speaker’s reputation, even when that speaker is himself. The appeal belongs to a debate, not a universal guarantee that his view of the soul is correct.
Phaedo, approximately Stephanus 91b–c, Socrates speaking to Simmias and Cebes after their objections to the arguments about the soul’s survival. He specifically asks them to contradict him if they think his reasoning is wrong. This is a complete sentence from Benjamin Jowett’s English translation, Project Gutenberg #1658, in the dialogue after the translator’s separate introduction. Socrates is a character and local speaker; do not attribute the sentence as a direct personal remark by Plato.
“Justice was doing one’s own business, and not being a busybody.”
Justice in the city is connected with people fulfilling appropriate responsibilities rather than constantly interfering in roles that are not theirs.
The Republic, Book IV; the statement summarizes a definition developed within Socrates’ argument about the ordered city.
“Then to injure a friend or any one else is not the act of a just man, but of the opposite, who is the unjust?”
Socrates argues that deliberately harming another person cannot be a proper exercise of justice, including when someone calls the target an enemy. This challenges the earlier suggestion that a just person should help friends and hurt enemies.
The Republic, Book I, Socrates replying to Polemarchus in the examination of the maxim that justice helps friends and harms enemies. Benjamin Jowett English translation, Project Gutenberg #1497. The source presents a question in dialogue, not a standalone personal motto from Plato; the moral argument considers whether hurting someone can make that person better.
“And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to be the subject and ally?”
Socrates argues that self-government involves a rational faculty attending to the whole person while spirited impulses support its judgment. The passage is a question within his analogy between a well-ordered city and the three parts of the soul. It does not mean that all emotion should be suppressed or that Plato established a modern psychological theory.
Plato, The Republic, Book IV, approximately 441e–442a; Socrates addressing Glaucon while contrasting the rational, spirited and appetitive parts of the soul. Exact sentence from Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1497, Book IV main dialogue (not introductory editorial matter). The premise belongs to an ancient account of the soul and remains open to philosophical interpretation; not clinical or neuroscientific evidence.
