Socrates Quotes

...[M]en are put in a sort of guard-post, from which one must not release one's self or run away...

Well, then, let's not just trust the likelihood based on painting.

We gain our first measure of intelligence when we first admit our own ignorance.

I swear it upon Zeus an outstanding runner cannot be the equal of an average wrestler.

I know nothing but the certainty of my own ignorance.

The uninitiated are those who believe in nothing except what they can grasp in their hands, and who deny the existence of all that is invisible.

Athletics have become professionalized.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest
amount of money and honour and reputation,
and caring so little about wisdom and
truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?

I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this?

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.

In order that the mind should see light instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world, until its eye can learn to contemplate reality and that supreme splendor which we have called the good. Hence there may well be an art whose aim would be to effect this very thing.

It is a base thing for a man to wax old in careless self-neglect before he has lifted up his eyes and seen what manner of man he was made to be, in the full perfection of bodily strength and beauty. But these glories are withheld from him who is guilty of self-neglect, for they are not wont to blaze forth unbidden.

An unexamined life is a life of no account.

A man who preserves his integrity no real, long-lasting harm can ever come.

...I do not think that it is right for a man to appeal to the jury or to get himself acquitted by doing so; he ought to inform them of the facts and convince them by argument. The jury does not sit to dispense justice as a favour, but to decide where justice lies; and the oath which they have sworn is not to show favour at their own discretion, but to return a just and lawful verdict... Therefore you must not expect me, gentlemen, to behave towards you in a way which I consider neither reputable nor moral nor consistent with my religious duty.

The man who is truly wise knows that he knows very little.

If he who does not know kept silent, discord would cease.

Admitting one's ignorance is the first step in acquiring knowledge ...

We are what we think we are

One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one may have suffered from them.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
[As quoted in Plutarch's Of Banishment]

This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.

...[R]eal wisdom is the property of God, and... human wisdom has little or no value.

It is best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be as good as possible.

The greatest flood has the soonest ebb; the sorest tempest the most sudden calm; the hottest love the coldest end; and from the deepest desire oftentimes ensues the deadliest hate.

Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?

By means of beauty, all beautiful things become beautiful.

Man's life is like a drop of dew on a leaf.

If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all

The years wrinkle our skin, but lack of enthusiasm wrinkles our soul.

One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.

Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead, to live? And we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb ...

A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution of body nor knowledge of mind.

Regard your good name as the richest jewel yoou can possibly be possessed of.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

I only know how little I know

Scio me nihil scire" - I know that I know nothing

Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they're fools, and fools who think they are wise.

The soul is cured of its maladies by certain incantations; these incantations are beautiful reasons, from which temperance is generated in souls.

The law presumably says that it is finest to keep as quiet as possible in misfortunes and not be irritated, since the good and bad in such things aren't plain, nor does taking it hard get one anywhere, not are any of the human things worthy of great seriousness ... One must accept the fall of the dice and settle one's affairs accordingly
in whatever way argument declares would be best. One must not behave like children who have stumbled and who hold on to the hurt place and spend their time in crying out; rather one must always habituate the soul to turn as quickly as possible to curing and setting aright what has fallen and is sick, doing away with lament by medicine.

Talk in order that I may see you.

The first key to greatness is to be in reality what we appear to be.

The alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. They will trust the written characters and not remember themselves.

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think

To move the world we must move ourselves.

The mind is the pilot of the soul.

How many things I can do without!

...[F]rom me you shall hear the whole truth; not, I can assure you, gentlemen, in flowery language... decked out with fine words and phrases; no, what you will hear will be a straightforward speech in the first words that occur to me, confident as I am in the justice of my cause; and I do not want any of you to expect anything different.

Neither I nor any other man should, on trial or in way, contrive to avoid death at any cost.

The best seasoning for food in hunger; for drink, thirst.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

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.

Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.

May the inward and outward man be as one.

Do not grieve over someone who changes all of the sudden. It might be that he has given up acting and returned to his true self.

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.

In every sort of danger there are various ways of winning through, if one is ready to do and say anything whatever.

Pride divides the men, humility joins them.

If thou continuous to take delight in idle argumentation thou mayest be qualified to combat with the sophists, but will never know how to live with men.

The Only Thing I Know For Sure Is That I Know Nothing At All, For Sure

The greatest of all mysteries is the man himself.

YOU ARE NOT ONLY GOOD TO YOURSELF, BUT THE CAUSE OF GOODNESS IN OTHERS

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

The great honor in the world is to be what we pretend to be

How can you call a man free when his pleasures rule over him.

If measure and symmetry are absent from any composition in any degree, ruin awaits both the ingredients and the composition ... Measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue the world over.

Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers.

Malice drinketh up the greater part of its own poison.

Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires.

Just as you ought not to attempt to cure eyes without head or head without body, so you should not treat body without soul.

Is something good because the gods approve of it? Or do the gods approve of it because it is good?

There is no learning without remembering.

Knowing thyself is the height of wisdom.

I have lived long enough to learn how much there is I can really do without ... He is nearest to God who needs the fewest things.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

This is ... self-knowled ge-for a man to know what he knows, and what he does not know.

Since all of us desire to be happy, and since we evidently become so on account of our use - that is our good use - of other things, and since knowledge is what provides this goodness of use and also good fortune, every man must, as seems plausible, prepare himself by every means for this: to be as wise as possible. Right?

Aren't you ashamed to be concerned so much about making all the money you can and advancing your reputation and prestige, while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your souls you have no thought or car?

Get not your friends by bare compliments but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.

I am quite ready to acknowledge ... that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and good (of this I am as certain as I can be of any such matters), and to men departed who are better than those whom I leave behind. And therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead.

Death offers mankind a full view of truth.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.

The misuse of language induces evil in the soul

She soars on her own wings.

If at first you don't succeed, avoid skydiving.

I have not sought during my life to amass wealth and to adorn my body, but I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience, and above all with a love of liberty.

I was attached to this city by the god - though it seems a ridiculous thing to say - as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you
all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company.

Every pleasure or pain has a sort of rivet with which it fastens the soul to the body and pins it down and makes it corporeal, accepting as true whatever the body certifies.

If you would seek health, look first to the spine.

If I save my insight, I don't attend to weakness of eyesight.

They give you the semblance of success, I give you the reality ...

It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself,

Are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?

O we have not choice but to agree that in each of us are found the same elements and characteristics as are found in the city? After all, where else could the city have got them from?

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.

Follow the argument wherever it leads.

A free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly, for nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind.