Socrates (n.) is a world-historic figure of a Greek enlightenment in which the classical existence did not only lose its remarkable instinctive reliability, but even more relevantly the ground of its life, its mythical depth.
Socrates (n.) is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph]. While, among all previous philosophers, life had served thought and knowledge, for Socrates thought serves life. Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications.
Socrates (n.) is the turning-point, the vortex of world history.
Socrates (n.) is among the lowest of the low: he was the mob. You can still see for yourself how ugly he was.
Socrates (n.) was a clown who succeeded in making men take him seriously: what then was the matter?
Socrates (n.) was a misunderstanding. The whole of the morality of amelioration—that of Christianity as well—was a misunderstanding.
Socrates (n.) represents a moment of the most profound perversity in the history of values.
Socrates (n.) inverts the creative order: in productive men instinct creates and consciousness cautions; in him instinct is the critic and consciousness the creator — a monstrosity per defectum.
Socrates (n.) chose death over exile and went to it as he left the Symposium — the last drinker at dawn, while his companions slept on to dream of him.
Socrates (n.) could not have lived among us, and would in any event not have reached seventy.
Socrates (n.) will one day replace the Bible as guide to morals: he excels Christ in being serious cheerfully, in roguish wisdom — the finest state of the soul — and in the finer intellect.
Socrates (n.) wanted to die: Athens did not give him the hemlock, he forced Athens to give it to him — 'death is the only doctor here'.
Socrates (n.) mocked morality for being unable to justify itself logically — yet that inability was part of its goodness; making virtue demonstrable dissolved the Greek instincts.