Socrates quotes

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

• 10
• reform

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

• 9
• reputation

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.

• 9
• senses

The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.

• 9
• desires

Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth

• 9
• truth

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.

• 8
• insults

The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.

• 8
• envy

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

• 8
• nature

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

• 8
• deceptionlying

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

• 8
• easily

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

• 7
• women

An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all

• 7
• education

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

• 7
• fame

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

• 6
• friends

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

• 6
• wealth

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

• 6
• purpose

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

• 6
• wealth

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

• 5
• control

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

• 5
• evil

The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows. Socrates on life and death

• 5
• life

He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.

• 5
• contentment

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

• 5
• life

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

• 4
• gods

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

• 4
• life

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

• 4
• life

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.

• 4
• listening

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

• 4
• change

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

• 4
• knowledge

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

• 3
• beauty

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

• 3
• prayer

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

• 3

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

• 3
• amazement

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

• 3
• happiness

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

• 3

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

• 3
• celibacy

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

• 3
• justice

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

• 2
• except

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you

• 2
• philosophy

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.

• 2
• common

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

• 1
• wedding

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

• 1
• divine

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.

• 1
• government

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.

• 1
• respect

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

• 1
• last

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

• 1
• potential

An honest man is always a child.

• 1
• child

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

• 1
• life

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?

• reflection

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.

• philosophy

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

• intelligence

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.

• education

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.

• poetry

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

• alive

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?

• death

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.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

• intelligence

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

• death

How many are the things I can do without!

• property

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.

• truth

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.

• greed

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

• courage

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.

• wisdom

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

• gods

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

• nature

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

• life

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

• live

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.

• knowledge

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.

• morals

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.

• revenge

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.

• death

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

• wisdom

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

• living

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.

• love