Socrates Quotes

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

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

Wisdom is knowing how little we know.

The cure of many diseases remains unknown to the physicians of Hellos (Greece) because they do not study the whole person.

If I tell you that I would be disobeying the god and on that account it is impossible for me to keep quiet, you won't be persuaded by me, taking it that I am ionizing. And if I tell you that it is the greatest good for a human being to have discussions every day about virtue and the other things you hear me talking about, examining myself and others, and that the unexamined life is not livable for a human being, you will be even less persuaded.

The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

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.

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

What a lot of things I don't need.

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.

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

All that we know is nothing can be known.

The same wind is blowing, and yet one of us may be cold and the other not.

A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.

Laws are not made for the good.

To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.

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

It seems that God took away the minds of poets that they might better express His.

Talk in order that I may see you.

I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.

Get married, in any case. If you happen to get a good mate, you will be happy; if a bad one, you will become philosophical, which is a fine thing in itself.

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

Our lives are but specks of dust falling through the fingers of time. Like sands of the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued." "It is not living that matters, but living rightly. The unexamined life is not worth living.

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

[N]either in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

She soars on her own wings.

It is better to suffer an injustice than to commit one

There is no greater magnificence than to defeat oneself. That is the magnificence.

You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.

The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

I know one thing, that I know nothing.

I know that I know nothing.

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.

When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery.

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

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.

Flattery is like friendship in show, but not in fruit.

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.

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.

What most counts is not merely to live, but to live right.

In every person there is a sun. Just let them shine.

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

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.

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.

Let he who would move the world, first complete an environmental impact assessment and a 90-day public comment period.