For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.

I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.

I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.

I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.

I have been commanded by the oracle to do philosophy.'

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying.

For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown.

The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

Apology