When we had heard them state their objections, we all felt were very much depressed... We had been convinced by the earlier part of the discussion, and now we felt that they had upset our convictions and destroyed our confidence... How can we believe in anything after this? Socrates' [earlier] argument was absolutely convincing, and now it is completely discredited....

[Socrates said] There is one danger that we must guard against... of becoming misologic... in the sense that people become misanthropic. No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than that of developing a dislike for argument.  [Misos is "hatred" in Greek.  Logos means here "rational argument".]

Misology and misanthropy arise in just the same way. Misanthropy is induced by believing in somebody quite uncritically. You assume that a person is absolutely truthful and sincere and reliable, and then a little later you find that he is shoddy and unreliable. Then the same thing happens again. After repeated disappointments at the hands of the very people who might be supposed to be your nearest and most intimate friends, constant irritation ends by making you dislike everybody and suppose that there is no sincerity to be found anywhere...

The resemblance between arguments and people lies...in what I said before, that when one believes that an argument is true without measuring it by good logic, and then a little later decides rightly or wrongly that it is false, and the same thing happens again and again – you know how it is, especially with those who spend their time in arguing both sides – they end by believing that they are wiser than anyone else, because they alone have discovered that there is nothing stable or dependable either in facts or in arguments, and that everything fluctuates just like the water in a tidal channel, and never stays at any point for any time...

Suppose that there is a path of reasoning which is true and valid and capable of being discovered, if anyone nevertheless, through his experience of these arguments which seem to the same people to be sometimes true and sometimes false, attached no responsibility to himself and his lack of the special skills needed, but was finally content, in exasperation, to shift the blame from himself to the arguments, and spend the rest of his life hating and criticizing them, and so missed the chance of knowing the truth about reality – would it not be a deplorable thing?

That is the first thing that we must guard against. We must not let it enter our minds that there may be no validity in argument. On the contrary we should recognize that we ourselves are still intellectual invalids, but that we must brace ourselves and do our best to become healthy...

That is the spirit in which I am prepared to approach discussion... If you will take my advice, you will think very little of me, Socrates, and much more of truth. If you think that anything I say is true, you must agree with; if not, oppose it with every argument that you have. You must not allow me, in my enthusiasm, to deceive both myself and you....