A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong—acting the part of a good man or of a bad.
What it means
A person worth anything doesn’t weigh an action by whether it might get them killed. The only question is whether it is right or wrong, whether it is what a good person or a bad one would do.
Socrates isn’t saying that life doesn’t matter. He is saying that the risk to it shouldn’t be what decides how you act.
The context
In 399 BC Socrates was put on trial in Athens, accused of impiety and of corrupting the young. The Apology is Plato’s account of the speech he gave in his own defence. He was sentenced to death and, as Plato tells it, put to death with poison after refusing his friends’ offers to help him escape.
He says this line in answer to an imagined critic: “And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end?” He goes on to recall that, as a soldier at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium, he “remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death,” and says it would be strange to desert his post now “through fear of death, or any other fear.”
Why it matters
Few of us will ever face Socrates’ choice. But the habit he describes, asking “is this right?” before “what will this cost me?”, applies to every ordinary decision, from what to say in a meeting to what to own up to at home.
Putting the cost question second doesn’t make the costs go away. It just stops them from quietly making the decision for you.
About Socrates
Greek philosopher, c. 470–399 BC
Socrates was a philosopher in classical Athens. He wrote nothing himself, and is known mainly through the accounts of others, above all his students Plato and Xenophon. His way of questioning, now called the Socratic method, works through short questions and answers that expose the contradictions in a person’s views.
In 399 BC he was accused of impiety and of corrupting the young, and, as Plato tells it, was put to death by poison.
The source, and how we checked it
It comes from Plato, Apology (translated by Benjamin Jowett), 399 BC.
We matched the quote word for word against the Project Gutenberg text of Benjamin Jowett's translation of Plato's Apology. Socrates wrote nothing himself: this is his defence as Plato wrote it, and Plato wrote in Greek, so other translations word it differently. We last checked this on 5 November 2026.