"Democracy was born in Greece but unfortunately we have not been able, up to now, to tolerate or forgive the giants amongst us. Their very presence becomes a deep wound in our being. Rather than becoming a challenge, a great invitation for a pilgrimage to the heights of consciousness, it becomes a wound. And it is very difficult to live with that wound. Something has to be done, and the easiest way is to destroy the man who makes you feel small.

"The height of Socrates or Diogenes simply makes the ordinary man so inferior. But there are two ways to face this situation; one has never been used. The unused way is that the presence of Socrates or Pythagoras should become a deep certainty that 'what can happen to another man can also happen to me. In their heights are my heights, hidden inside. In their freedom are the seeds of my freedom. In their sky, the stars have become clear – just a little effort is needed and my dark night can also be full of stars.' Their presence should become a guarantee of human potential, of human growth, of possibilities which ordinarily look too far away.

"But if Socrates can touch those stars, in his hands our hands are also hidden, because no two human beings are essentially different. All differences are non-essential; the intrinsic man is one and the same. But this path has not been chosen – because it was difficult, because it would have to be proved by traveling to the same heights on the same lonely path, to attain to the same light and the same consciousness.

"Man chooses the easier. He does not bother whether the easier is truer or not. The easier is to remove the man like Socrates. His removal will take away the wound that his presence creates. Then you can be happy in your ordinariness, then you can rejoice in your retardedness, then there is no one who can hurt your ego.

"Socrates was not killed because he had committed any crime. His only crime can be that he attained what is hidden in you. He made reality what is only potential in you; he transformed the seed into a glorious flower, dancing in the wind and the sun."