Socrates Quotes
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Nothing is to be preferred before justice. ~Socrates - Justice
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate. ~Socrates - Hatred
One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing. ~Socrates - Knowledge
The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him. ~Socrates - Life and Living
See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all. ~Socrates - Nature
Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us. ~Socrates - Prayer
The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms. ~Socrates - Wisdom
Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live. ~Socrates - Food and Eating
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. ~Socrates - Love
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. ~Socrates - Knowledge
The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow. ~Socrates - Humor
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. ~Socrates - Listening
The unexamined life is not worth living. ~Socrates - Growth
The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be. ~Socrates - Glory
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed. ~Socrates - Purpose
The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods. ~Socrates - Desire
I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within. ~Socrates - Love
Happiness is unrepentant pleasure. ~Socrates - Happiness
A multitude of books distracts the mind. ~Socrates - Books and Reading
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. ~Socrates - Riches
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. ~Socrates - Good and Evil
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. ~Socrates - Government
An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all ~Socrates - Education
Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune. ~Socrates - Change
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us. ~Socrates - Wisdom
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. ~Socrates - Writers and Writing
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it. ~Socrates - Riches
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. ~Socrates - Friends and Friendship
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. ~Socrates - Death and Dying
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. ~Socrates - Debate
Enjoy yourself -- it's later than you think. ~Socrates - Enjoyment
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it. ~Socrates - Desire
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior. ~Socrates - Feminism
I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world. ~Socrates - Humankind
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. ~Socrates - Reputation
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 - Death and Dying
How many are the things I can do without! ~Socrates - Possessions
Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one. ~Socrates - Control
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. ~Socrates - Marriage
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. ~Socrates - Morality
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. ~Socrates - Fame
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. ~Socrates - Greed
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. ~Socrates - Dishonesty
Let him that would move the world, first move himself. ~Socrates - Influence
There is only one good -- knowledge; and only one evil -- ignorance. ~Socrates - Evil
Call no man unhappy until he is married. ~Socrates - Happiness
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny. ~Socrates - Beauty
The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor. ~Socrates - Envy
Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me. ~Socrates - Slander
To find yourself, think for yourself. ~Socrates - Thoughts and Thinking
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent. ~Socrates - Life and Living
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. ~Socrates - Wisdom
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. ~Socrates - Education
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. ~Socrates - Philosophers and Philosophy
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live. ~Socrates - Politicians and Politics
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. ~Socrates - Deception
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? ~Socrates - Famous Last Words
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. ~Socrates - Senses
He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature. ~Socrates - Contentment
An unexamined life is not worth living. ~Socrates - Life and Living
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. ~Socrates - Respectability
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty. ~Socrates - Contentment
The hottest love has the coldest end. ~Socrates - Love
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. ~Socrates - Teachers and Teaching
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults. ~Socrates - Correction
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 knew 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? ~Socrates - Death and Dying
What a lot of things there are a man can do without. ~Socrates - Wealth
I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good. ~Socrates - Potential