The Greeks Flashcards
“All who have and do persuade people of things do so by molding a false argument. For if all men on all subjects had both memory of things past and awareness of things present and foreknowledge of the future, speech would not be similarly similar, since as things are now it is not easy for them to recall the past nor to consider present nor to predict the future.”
Gorgias, Encomium of Helen
“What is becoming to a city is manpower, to a body beauty, to a soul wisdom, to an action virtue, to a speech truth, and the opposites of these are unbecoming. Man and woman and speech and deed and city and object should be honored with praise if praiseworthy and incur blame if unworthy, for it is an equal error and mistake to blame the praisable and to praise the blamable.”
Gorgias, Encomium of Helen
“The effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of speeches, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make the hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion.”
Gorgias, Encomium of Helen
“On the matter of what is good and what is bad contrasting arguments are put forward in Greece by educated people: some say what is good and what is bad are two different things, others that they are the same thing, and the same thing is good for some but bad for others, or at one time good and at another time bad for the same person. For myself, I side with the latter group, and I shall examine the view by reference to human life, with its concern for food and drink and sex.”
Anonymous, Dissoi Logoi
“Contrasting arguments are also put forward on what is true and what is false. The one view affirms that the true statement and the false statement are different things: the other group affirms that the two statements are on the contrary the same. I for my part also hold the latter view: first, because the two statements are expressed in the same words; and next, because whenever a statement is made, if the event has taken place in the way indicated by the statement, the statement is true; but if the event has not taken place, in the way indicated, the statement is false.”
Anonymous, Dissoi Logoi
“I consider it a characteristic of the same man and of the same art to be able to converse in brief questions and answers, to know the truth of things, to plead one’s cause correctly, to be able to speak in public, to have an understanding of argument-skills, and to teach people about the nature of everything – both how everything is and how it came into being. First of all, will not the man who knows about the nature of everything also be able to act rightly in regard to everything?”
Anonymous, Dissoi Logoi
“What is most ridiculous of all is that they distrust those from whom they have to get this small profit – those to whom they intend to impart their sense of justice – and they deposit the fees from their students with men whom they have never taught. . . . But isn’t it irrational for men who impart virtue and soundness of mind to distrust their own students in particular? Surely men who were gentlemanly and just toward others would not wrong those who made them that way.”
Isocrates, Against the Sophists
“I am amazed when I see these men claiming students for themselves; they fail to notice that they are using an ordered art as a model for a creative activity. Who – besides them – has not seen that while the function of letters is unchanging and remains the same, so that we always keep using the same letters for the same sounds, the function of words is entirely opposite. What is said by one person is not useful in a similar way for the next speaker, but that man seems most artful who both speaks worthily of the subject matter and can discover things to say that are entirely different from what others have said.”
Isocrates, Against the Sophists
“In addition to having the requisite natural ability, the student must learn the forms of speeches and practice their uses. The teacher must go through these aspects as precisely as possible, so that nothing teachable is left out, but as for the rest, he must offer himself as a mode, so that those who are molded by him and can imitate him will immediately appear more florid and graceful than others.”
Isocrates, Against the Sophists
“But since we have the ability to persuade one another and to make clear to ourselves what we want, not only do we avoid living like animals, but we have come together, built cities, made laws, and invented the arts. Speech is responsible for nearly all our inventions. It legislated in matters of justice and injustice and beauty and baseness, and without these laws, we could not live with one another.”
Isocrates, Antidosis
“I think that an art that can produce self-control and justice in those who are by nature badly disposed to virtue has never existed and does not now exist, and that those who previously made promises to this effect will cease speaking and stop uttering nonsense before such an education is discovered. In my view, people improve and become worthier if they are interested in speaking well, have a passion for being able to persuade their audience, and also desire advantage – not what foolish people think it is but that which truly has power.”
Isocrates, Antidosis
“I am amazed that those who congratulate naturally able speakers for the fine talent they have been endowed with nonetheless still find fault with those who wish to become like these and accuse them of desiring an unjust and bad education. Does anything that is noble turn our shameful or wicked if one works to attain it?”
Isocrates, Antidosis
“Well, then, isn’t the rhetorical art, taken as a whole, a way of directing the soul by means of speech, not only in the lawcourts and on other public occasions but also in private? Isn’t it one and the same art whether its subject is great or small, and no more to be held in esteem – if it is followed correctly – when its questions are serious than when they are trivial?”
Plato, Phaedrus
“‘The reason they cannot define rhetoric is that they are ignorant of dialectic. It is their ignorance that makes them think they have discovered what rhetoric is when they have mastered only what it is necessary to learn preliminaries. So they teach these preliminaries and imagine their pupils have received a full course in rhetoric, thinking the task of using each of them persuasively and putting them together into a whole speech is a minor matter to be worked out by pupils from their own resources’?”
Plato, Phaedrus
“ . . . writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever.”
Plato, Phaedrus
