And what kind of person am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and who would be pleased to refute anyone who says anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn’t be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute.

Living, at any age, involves projecting yourself into the future. When we go through a day, making decisions, planning, organizing our agency, we stretch ourselves forward in time. Indeed, this kind of stretching is required even for the mental activities of planning, deliberating, and considering, all of which take time. And so it is natural that

We are unable to think about the most important things on our own, and we habitually shield ourselves from this terrifying fact. All of us, even professional philosophers, walk around with a conceit of knowledge separating us from other people. Our feeling of basic mental competence—of having the answers on which the living of our lives

When Pierre concludes “there was no answer to any of these questions,” Socrates would say he is mistaking a fact about himself for a fact about the world: We should not allow into our minds the conviction that argumentation has nothing sound about it; much rather we should believe that it is we who are not yet sound and that we must take courage

The most radical feature of Socrates is not his godlike hidden wisdom but the naked vulnerability he displayed in treating others as sources of answers to his questions. That is, for Socrates, what one human being is to another: either a source of answers to your questions, or a source of questions that challenge your answers. Socrates explicitly

So what would it be for Polus to treat Socrates as his equal? It would be for Polus to recognize that Socrates has a claim on the truth. When Socrates describes the truth as his property, he is clearly not insisting that everything he currently believes is true, since that would amount to a claim to knowledge. Socrates means that he has a right to

There is something very strange in the practice of seeking, from someone, proofs that you do not need such proofs from them.

Real equality means you know that you are useful, important, and valuable to me not because I tell you those things, or send you signals to that effect, but because I am making active use of you, leaning on you, doing something I could not be doing without you. The practice of equality is where equality comes alive.

The moralist tells you to strive to be on par with everyone else, whereas the anti-moralist tells you to strive for elevated status. I want to first raise some reasons for thinking that neither bit of advice will suffice to make you happy, because what you really want is elevated status and equality.