Socrates Quotes
Best quotes by the Greek Philosopher Socrates
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.
The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
The Secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
Wisdom begins in wonder.
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
Enjoy yourself -- it's later than you think.
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.
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Let him that would move the world, first move himself.
I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
A multitude of books distracts the mind.
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.
There is only one good -- knowledge; and only one evil -- ignorance.
The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.
The hottest love has the coldest end.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.
Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.
The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.
Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
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Socrates's Quotes About
Go to table of contentsSocrates wisdom quotes
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Wisdom begins in wonder.
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.
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.
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Socrates wealth quotes
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He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
What a lot of things there are a man can do without.
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Socrates life quotes
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Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
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Socrates marriage quotes
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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.
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
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Socrates knowledge quotes
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One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
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.
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More quotes by Socrates
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The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.
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.
Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all
The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
What a lot of things there are a man can do without.
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.
Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.
The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
Call no man unhappy until he is married.
Nothing is to be preferred before justice.
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.
Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.
Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
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.
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Let him that would move the world first move himself.
An honest man is always a child.
All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it.......Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.
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 know 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?
Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober -- minded men.
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.
Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure
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.
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.
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.
See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.
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 decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
How many are the things I can do without!
I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?
One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.
Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.
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.
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
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Socrates's Quotes About ...
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