The Wit and Wisdom of Cricket (Wit & Wisdom)

Billy Crystal If grass can grow through cement, love can find you at every time of your life. Cher Men and women. The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things. I hate it as much as peanuts. Orson Welles The silver screen If you have to have a job in this world, a high-priced movie star is a pretty good gig. Tom Hanks There are only six basic plots. Frankenstein and My Fair Lady are really the same story.

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder. Alfred Hitchcock Growing old Everybody my age should be issued with a 2lb fresh salmon. Richard Griffiths Age, a high price to pay for maturity. Anthony Powell Dreams and desires Boredom: Marilyn Monroe We have to believe in free will. Isaac Bashevis Singer Nothing but the truth There are two kinds of truth: Raymond Chandler Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

Mel Brooks The final curtain Life is like a B-movie. Ted Turner For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off. Malcolm Muggeridge Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. Jerry Seinfeld Heaven and Hell I shall be happy in heaven provided the angels are beautifully attired and wear their halos at a tilt.

The problem of understanding Socrates as a philosopher is shown in the following: In Xenophon's Symposium , Socrates is reported as saying he devotes himself only to what he regards as the most important art or occupation, that of discussing philosophy. However, in The Clouds , Aristophanes portrays Socrates as accepting payment for teaching and running a Sophist school with Chaerephon.

Also, in Plato's Apology and Symposium , as well as in Xenophon's accounts, Socrates explicitly denies accepting payment for teaching. More specifically, in the Apology , Socrates cites his poverty as proof that he is not a teacher. Two fragments are extant of the writings by Timon of Phlius pertaining to Socrates, [32] although Timon is known to have written to ridicule and lampoon philosophy. Details about the life of Socrates are derived from both contemporary sources, and later ancient period sources.

Of the contemporary sources, the greater extent of information is taken from the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon both devotees of Socrates , and the testaments of Antisthenes , Aristippus , and Aeschines of Sphettos , and the lesser [24] from the plays of Aristophanes. The sources are thought to have in part or wholly made use of the factual information of the life of Socrates available to each of them, to give their own interpretation of the nature of his teaching, giving rise to differing versions in each case.

For example, [24] in Aristophanes's play The Clouds , Socrates is made into a clown of sorts, particularly inclined toward sophistry , who teaches his students how to bamboozle their way out of debt. However, since most of Aristophanes's works function as parodies, it is presumed that his characterization in this play was also not literal. The year of birth of Socrates stated is an assumed date, [50] or estimate, [51] given the fact of the dating of anything in ancient history in part being sometimes reliant on argument stemming from the inexact period floruit of individuals.

Socrates was born in Alopeke , and belonged to the tribe Antiochis. His father was Sophroniscus , a sculptor, or stonemason. Socrates first worked as a stonemason, and there was a tradition in antiquity, not credited by modern scholarship, that Socrates crafted the statues of the Charites , which stood near the Acropolis until the 2nd century AD.

Xenophon reports that because youths were not allowed to enter the Agora , they used to gather in workshops surrounding it. Most notable among them was Simon the Shoemaker. In the monologue of the Apology , Socrates states he was active for Athens in the battles of Amphipolis , Delium , and Potidaea. Socrates's exceptional service at Delium is also mentioned in the Laches by the General after whom the dialogue is named b.

In the Apology, Socrates compares his military service to his courtroom troubles, and says anyone on the jury who thinks he ought to retreat from philosophy must also think soldiers should retreat when it seems likely that they will be killed in battle. During , he participated as a member of the Boule. According to Xenophon, Socrates was the Epistates for the debate, [71] but Delebecque and Hatzfeld think this is an embellishment, because Xenophon composed the information after Socrates's death.

The generals were seen by some to have failed to uphold the most basic of duties, and the people decided upon capital punishment. However, when the prytany responded by refusing to vote on the issue, the people reacted with threats of death directed at the prytany itself. They relented, at which point Socrates alone as epistates blocked the vote, which had been proposed by Callixeinus. The outcome of the trial was ultimately judged to be a miscarriage of justice, or illegal , but, actually, Socrates's decision had no support from written statutory law, instead being reliant on favouring a continuation of less strict and less formal nomos law.

He was to be brought back to be subsequently executed. However, Socrates returned home and did not go to Salamis as he was expected to. Socrates lived during the time of the transition from the height of the Athenian hegemony to its decline with the defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War. At a time when Athens sought to stabilize and recover from its defeat, the Athenian public may have been entertaining doubts about democracy as an efficient form of government. Socrates appears to have been a critic of democracy, [80] and some scholars interpret his trial as an expression of political infighting.

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Claiming loyalty to his city, Socrates clashed with the current course of Athenian politics and society. One of Socrates's purported offenses to the city was his position as a social and moral critic. Rather than upholding a status quo and accepting the development of what he perceived as immorality within his region, Socrates questioned the collective notion of "might makes right" that he felt was common in Greece during this period.

Plato refers to Socrates as the " gadfly " of the state as the gadfly stings the horse into action, so Socrates stung various Athenians , insofar as he irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. According to Plato's Apology , Socrates's life as the "gadfly" of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone were wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded that no-one was wiser.

Socrates believed the Oracle's response was not correct, because he believed he possessed no wisdom whatsoever. He proceeded to test the riddle by approaching men considered wise by the people of Athens—statesmen, poets, and artisans—in order to refute the Oracle's pronouncement. Questioning them, however, Socrates concluded: Socrates realized the Oracle was correct; while so-called wise men thought themselves wise and yet were not, he himself knew he was not wise at all, which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since he was the only person aware of his own ignorance.

Socrates's paradoxical wisdom made the prominent Athenians he publicly questioned look foolish, turning them against him and leading to accusations of wrongdoing. Socrates defended his role as a gadfly until the end: Robin Waterfield suggests that Socrates was a voluntary scapegoat; his death was the purifying remedy for Athens's misfortunes.

In this view, the token of appreciation for Asclepius the Greek god for curing illness would represent a cure for Athens's ailments. Socrates's death is described at the end of Plato's Phaedo , although Plato was not himself present at the execution. As to the veracity of Plato's account it seems possible he made choice of a number of certain factors perhaps omitting others in the description of the death, as the Phaedo description does not describe progress of the action of the poison Gill in concurrence with modern descriptions.

After he lay down, the man who administered the poison pinched his foot; Socrates could no longer feel his legs. The numbness slowly crept up his body until it reached his heart. Socrates chose to cover his face during the execution a6 Phaedo.

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According to Phaedo 61c—69e , [94] Socrates states that "[a]ll of philosophy is training for death". Socrates's last words are thought to be ironic C. Gill , [44] or sincere J. Socrates turned down Crito's pleas to attempt an escape from prison. Xenophon and Plato agree that Socrates had an opportunity to escape, as his followers were able to bribe the prison guards.

There have been several suggestions offered as reasons why he chose to stay:. The full reasoning behind his refusal to flee is the main subject of the Crito. Frey has suggested in truth, Socrates chose to commit suicide. Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry, known as the Socratic method or method of "elenchus", which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice.

It was first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. To solve a problem, it would be broken down into a series of questions, the answers to which gradually distill the answer a person would seek. The development and practice of this method is one of Socrates's most enduring contributions, and is a key factor in earning his mantle as the father of political philosophy , ethics or moral philosophy, and as a figurehead of all the central themes in Western philosophy. The Socratic method has often been considered as a defining element of American legal education.

To illustrate the use of the Socratic method, a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their knowledge. The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions.

It was designed to force one to examine one's own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. An alternative interpretation of the dialectic is that it is a method for direct perception of the Form of the Good. Philosopher Karl Popper describes the dialectic as "the art of intellectual intuition, of visualising the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man's everyday world of appearances. Hadot writes that "in Plato's view, every dialectical exercise, precisely because it is an exercise of pure thought, subject to the demands of the Logos , turns the soul away from the sensible world, and allows it to convert itself towards the Good.

The beliefs of Socrates, as distinct from those of Plato, are difficult to discern. Little in the way of concrete evidence exists to demarcate the two. The lengthy presentation of ideas given in most of the dialogues may be the ideas of Socrates himself, but which have been subsequently deformed or changed by Plato, and some scholars think Plato so adapted the Socratic style as to make the literary character and the philosopher himself impossible to distinguish. Others argue that he did have his own theories and beliefs.

Consequently, distinguishing the philosophical beliefs of Socrates from those of Plato and Xenophon has not proven easy, so it must be remembered that what is attributed to Socrates might actually be more the specific concerns of these two thinkers instead. The matter is complicated because the historical Socrates seems to have been notorious for asking questions but not answering, claiming to lack wisdom concerning the subjects about which he questioned others.

If anything in general can be said about the philosophical beliefs of Socrates, it is that he was morally, intellectually, and politically at odds with many of his fellow Athenians. When he is on trial for heresy and corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens, he uses his method of elenchos to demonstrate to the jurors that their moral values are wrong-headed. He tells them they are concerned with their families, careers, and political responsibilities when they ought to be worried about the "welfare of their souls". Socrates's assertion that the gods had singled him out as a divine emissary seemed to provoke irritation, if not outright ridicule.

Socrates also questioned the Sophistic doctrine that arete virtue can be taught. He liked to observe that successful fathers such as the prominent military general Pericles did not produce sons of their own quality. Socrates argued that moral excellence was more a matter of divine bequest than parental nurture. This belief may have contributed to his lack of anxiety about the future of his own sons.

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Also, according to A. Long, "There should be no doubt that, despite his claim to know only that he knew nothing, Socrates had strong beliefs about the divine", and, citing Xenophon's Memorabilia , 1.



According to Xenophon, he was a teleologist who held that god arranges everything for the best. Socrates frequently says his ideas are not his own, but his teachers'. He mentions several influences: Prodicus the rhetor and Anaxagoras the philosopher. Perhaps surprisingly, Socrates claims to have been deeply influenced by two women besides his mother: Plato's Symposium , a witch and priestess from Mantinea , taught him all he knows about eros , or love ; and that Aspasia , the mistress of Pericles , taught him the art of rhetoric. Havelock , on the other hand, did not accept the view that Socrates's view was identical with that of Archelaus, in large part due to the reason of such anomalies and contradictions that have surfaced and "post-dated his death.

Many of the beliefs traditionally attributed to the historical Socrates have been characterized as "paradoxical" because they seem to conflict with common sense. The following are among the so-called Socratic paradoxes: The term, " Socratic paradox " can also refer to a self-referential paradox , originating in Socrates's utterance, "what I do not know I do not think I know", [] often paraphrased as " I know that I know nothing.

The statement " I know that I know nothing " is often attributed to Socrates, based on a statement in Plato's Apology. Therefore, Socrates is claiming to know about the art of love, insofar as he knows how to ask questions.

The Wit and Wisdom of Cricket

The only time he actually claimed to be wise was within Apology , in which he says he is wise "in the limited sense of having human wisdom". On the one hand, he drew a clear line between human ignorance and ideal knowledge; on the other, Plato's Symposium Diotima's Speech and Republic Allegory of the Cave describe a method for ascending to wisdom. In Plato's Theaetetus a , Socrates compares his treatment of the young people who come to him for philosophical advice to the way midwives treat their patients, and the way matrimonial matchmakers act.

This distinction is echoed in Xenophon's Symposium 3. For his part as a philosophical interlocutor, he leads his respondent to a clearer conception of wisdom, although he claims he is not himself a teacher Apology. Perhaps significantly, he points out that midwives are barren due to age, and women who have never given birth are unable to become midwives; they would have no experience or knowledge of birth and would be unable to separate the worthy infants from those that should be left on the hillside to be exposed.

To judge this, the midwife must have experience and knowledge of what she is judging. Socrates believed the best way for people to live was to focus on the pursuit of virtue rather than the pursuit, for instance, of material wealth. The idea that there are certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates's teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues.

Socrates stressed that " the unexamined life is not worth living [and] ethical virtue is the only thing that matters.

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It is argued that Socrates believed "ideals belong in a world only the wise man can understand", [] making the philosopher the only type of person suitable to govern others. In Plato's dialogue the Republic , Socrates openly objected to the democracy that ran Athens during his adult life. It was not only Athenian democracy: Socrates found short of ideal any government that did not conform to his presentation of a perfect regime led by philosophers, and Athenian government was far from that.

It is, however, possible that the Socrates of Plato's Republic is colored by Plato's own views. During the last years of Socrates's life, Athens was in continual flux due to political upheaval. Democracy was at last overthrown by a junta known as the Thirty Tyrants , led by Plato's relative, Critias , who had once been a student and friend of Socrates. The Tyrants ruled for about a year before the Athenian democracy was reinstated, at which point it declared an amnesty for all recent events.

Socrates's opposition to democracy is often denied, and the question is one of the biggest philosophical debates when trying to determine exactly what Socrates believed. The strongest argument of those who claim Socrates did not actually believe in the idea of philosopher kings is that the view is expressed no earlier than Plato's Republic , which is widely considered one of Plato's "Middle" dialogues and not representative of the historical Socrates's views.

Furthermore, according to Plato's Apology of Socrates , an "early" dialogue, Socrates refused to pursue conventional politics; he often stated he could not look into other's matters or tell people how to live their lives when he did not yet understand how to live his own. He believed he was a philosopher engaged in the pursuit of Truth, and did not claim to know it fully.

Besides he is a rank coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our country…. The second myth I wanted to address is tied to the alterations President Truman made to the Presidential Seal. This one is unquestionably false, although somewhat understandable. While the changes to the seal, which always occurred around times of war, may explain the origin of the myth, its propagation is owed largely to popular culture.

But perhaps the final word should come from Winston Churchill, a Franklinesque wit himself. Subscribe or Give a Gift.