Socrates Quotes

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

People learn more on their own rather than being force fed.

The partisan when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

There are two kinds of disease of the soul, vice and ignorance.

No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training; it is part of his profession as a citizen to keep himself in good condition... [It is] a disgrace for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and the strength of which his body is capable.

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.

I believe that we cannot live better than in seeking to become better, nor more agreeably than having a clear conscience.

There are beds and tables in the world - plenty of them, are there not? But there are only two ideas or forms of them - one the idea of a bed, the other of a table.

He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance.

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

Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?

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

It is better to make a mistake with full force of your being than to carefully avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit.

No one can teach, if by teaching we mean the transmission of knowledge, in any mechanical fashion, from one person to another. The most that can be done is that one person who is more knowledgeable than another can, by asking a series of questions, stimulate the other to think, and so cause him to learn for himself.

I am a fool, but I know I'm a fool and that makes me smarter than you.

My belief is that to have no wants is divine.

Whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man - whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyse the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy.

The reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.

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

Understanding a question is half an answer.

If you will be guided by me, you will make little account of Socrates, and much more of truth.

The examined life is the only life worth living.

Nothing very new. By taking good care of yourselves you are of service to me and my family as well as yourselves, no matter what you do, even if you don't think so at present. But if you neglect yourselves and are unwilling to live, as though following tracks, in accordance with what we now say and have said in the past too, then no matter how much or how seriously you agree with me at present you will accomplish next to nothing.

So you would rather suffer an injustice than do an injustice?

How many things are there which I do not want.

If I had engaged in politics, O men of Athens, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself.

We can do nothing without the body, let us always take care that it is in the best condition to sustain us.

Obscurity is dispelled by augmenting the light of discernment, not by attacking the darkness.

Let the questions be the curriculum.

For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

The only thing I know is that I know nothing

The Spirit is neither good nor bad, it runs where the wild heart leads" "Wisdom begins in wonder.

Follow the argument wherever it leads.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

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

God desired to be the real maker of a real bed, not a particular maker of a particular bed, and therefore He created a bed which is essentially and by nature one only.

Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.

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?

When you want success as badly as you want the air, then you will get it. There is no other secret of success.

The Delphic Oracle said I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because that I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.

There is a doctrine whispered in secret that a man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand.

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

Marry a good woman, and be happy the rest of your life. Or, marry a bad, and become a good philosopher

One cannot come closer to the gods than by bringing health to his Fellow Man.

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

It is not difficult to avoid death. It is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.