Socrates Quotes
Know thyself.
The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.
How many are the things I can do without!
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to pretend to be what we pretend to be.
By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.
I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.
Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
A multitude of books distracts the mind.
I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.
Malice drinketh up the greater part of its own poison.
He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults
He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.
Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.
When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.
Nothing is to be preferred before justice.
I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.
The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.
Let him that would move the world, first move himself.
Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
The hottest love has the coldest end.
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
Wisdom begins in wonder.
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.
What a lot of things there are a man can do without.
Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.
All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.
Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service
Call no man unhappy until he is married.
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.
To find yourself, think for yourself.
An honest man is always a child.
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
