Be Nice to Everyone???
This doesn’t sound like the pithy, “know Thyself” Plato I was brung up on, and I don’t remember reading it in any of his works.
I did a search, and found the quote listed often on the internet (usually as “be kind”, not “be nice”), so she’s not alone in thinking this is by him, although she expresses it more perkily. (Plato doesn’t need perky – he needs gravitas). Not one of them said where the quote came from, or what its context was.
I’m very suspicious. I could as easily believe Nietzche saying “Be Nice” as Plato.
So I found this:
Good to see someone else out there is as suspicious.
And, searching for Philo, I can’t find where he’s supposed to have said it either.
Okay, I’m going to indulge myself – it’s typical of Palin to find a quote by Plato that’s not only extremely out of character, but also (and for that reason) highly dubious. And that she doesn’t realize this.
Could it possibly be an attempt at a joke? Hard to tell, of course—sounds a lot like something Tina Fey’s “Sarah Palin” would say, but the parody has never strayed too far from the reality, has it?
Yeah, I know the difference between Plato and Socrates, but we don’t actually have anything Socrates wrote, and only his quotes through Plato and Xenophon. And, since Plato’s Socrates is wittier than Xenophon’s, a lot of people have suspected that a lot of what we think of as “Socrates” has a fair dollop of “Plato” in it.
Not that I could imagine Socrates, Plato, or Xenophon saying “Be Nice”
It’s impossible to be completely sure, isn’t it? That’s why I said I was indulging myself – there’s always wiggle room for plausible deniability.
But I strongly suspect that she or a speechwriter found this in some quote book or online, thought it sounded fresh and interesting (and possibly a bit out of character, and therefore really interesting. That’s giving it the biggest benefit of a doubt), and used it as a tag for a send-off. Whereas I read it and think it’s wildly out of character and suspect, which ruins the mood.
She’s bait. We use her to attract stupid Canadians like flies to shit. Then once they are all in a room together, we take their names and slowly and quietly disappear them over the next coulpe of years.
I think she meant to say, “Be excellent to each other.”
Spoke extemporaneously? In other words, for $200 you could sit and listen to her blathering without having made the effort to actually write a presentation? Sheesh.
Actually, Quayle gave the impression that he was honestly stupid, while Palin gives the impression that she is stupid on purpose. It depends on what you prefer.
I’ve looked a little more. I can’t find any believable source for the quote on any of the databases, be it from Philo of Alexandria , Plato, or anyone else.
But apparently the quote appears – as “Be kind for everuyone you meet is fighting a great battle” – in her book Going Rogue, page 24.
Aha! So it bothered someone else, too!
Sometime between the book at the speech, “kind” morphed into “nice”.
It strikes me as an extremely vapid quote, pseudo-profound and taking different interpretations, as the mood strikes. But with “nice” in it, it sounds like it belongs on a poster with rainbows and unicorns.
