Collected Quotes from the great Greek philosopher Socrates (470 BC-399 BC).
There is no proof that Socrates ever wrote anything, philosophical or biographical. Whatever information we derive about Socrates is from the works of his students – Xenofon, Plato, Aristotle and Aristophanes.
- I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
- How many things I can do without.
(Socrates) - They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.
(Socrates) - Thes secret of change is to fucus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
- I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good. (Socrates)
- Be of good hope in the face of death. Believe in this one truth for certain, that no evil can befall a good man either in life or death, and that his fate is not a matter of indifference to the gods.
(Socrates) - My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.
(Socrates) - 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) - Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
(Socrates) - When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
- Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul
(Socrates) - Man, know thyself.
(Socrates) - Virtue does not come from wealth, but … wealth, and every other good thing which men have … comes from virtue.
(Socrates) - It is best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be a good as possible.
- Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
(Socrates) - The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.
(Socrates) - Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
(Socrates) - 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) - Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
- Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.
(Socrates) - 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.
(Socrates) - If all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stack in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of before that which would fall to them by such a division.
(Socrates) - True perfection is a bold quest to seek. Only the willing and true of heart will seek the betterment of many.
- I swear it upon Zeus an outstanding runner cannot be the equal of an average wrestler.
(Socrates) - The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice And experience of them.
(Socrates) - True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
(Socrates) - Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
(Socrates) - Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.
(Socrates) - Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
(Socrates) - Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
- To find yourself, think for yourself.
(Socrates) - In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead the one being an innate desire of pleasure the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.
(Socrates) - If all our 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.
(Socrates) - Virtue is the beauty, and vice the deformity, of the soul.
(Socrates) - If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
(Socrates) - 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) - The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways I go to die, and you to live. Which is the better, God only knows.
(Socrates) - The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness for that runs faster than death.
(Socrates) - To gain a good reputation, endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
(Socrates) - Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.
(Socrates) - Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.
(Socrates) - The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.
(Socrates) - Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
(Socrates) - The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.
(Socrates) - 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)
- Be as you wish to seem.
(Socrates) - See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
(Socrates) - 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) - Education is the killing of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
- Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.
(Socrates) - Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius will you remember to pay the debt.
(Socrates) - The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
(Socrates) - Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
(Socrates) - I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the world
(Socrates) - Let him who would move the world , first move himself.
- The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.
(Socrates) - Pay attention to the young, and make them just as good as possible.
(Socrates) - An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.
(Socrates) - Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
(Socrates) - An honest man is always a child.
(Socrates) - He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
(Socrates) - A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution of body nor knowledge of mind.
(Socrates) - Happiness is unrepented pleasure.
(Socrates) - Bad men live to eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink in order to live.
(Socrates) - He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
(Socrates) - Wisdom begins in wonder.
(Socrates) - The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.
(Socrates) - A multitude of books distracts the mind.
(Socrates) - From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
(Socrates) - All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
(Socrates) - Could I climb the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice and proclaim, ‘Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth and take so little care of your children to whom one day you must relinquish it all’.
(Socrates) - But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God.
(Socrates) - As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
(Socrates) - He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who might be better employed.
(Socrates) - The unexamined life is not worth living.
(Socrates) - You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve.
(Socrates) - In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
(Socrates) - I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
(Socrates) - 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) - We too must endure and persevere in the inquiry, and then courage will not laugh at our faintheartedness in searching for courage which after all may, very likely, be endurance.
(Socrates) - Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
(Socrates) - The Ancient oracle said I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.
(Socrates) - Give me beauty in the inward soul may the outward and the inward man be at one.
(Socrates) - 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.
(Socrates) - And I say let a man be of good cheer about his soul. When the soul has been arrayed in her own proper jewels temperance and justice, and courage, and nobility and truth she is ready to go on her journey when the hour comes.
(Socrates) - Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.
(Socrates) - Nothing is to be preferred before justice.
(Socrates) - Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.
(Socrates) - If you can do only a little. Do what you can. What you cannot enforce, do not command.
(Socrates) - I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
(Socrates) - False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
(Socrates) - There is only one good — knowledge and only one evil — ignorance.
(Socrates) - 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) - I am quite ready to acknowledge … that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and good (of this I am as certain as I can be of any such matters), and to men departed who are better than those whom I leave behind. And therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead.
(Socrates) - 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) - In every sort of danger, there are various ways of winning through, if one is ready to do and say anything whatever.(Socrates)
- Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
(Socrates) - The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.
(Socrates) - I shall never act differently, even if I have to die for it many times
(Socrates) - It is necessary that one who really and truly fights for the right, if he is to survive even for a short time, shall act as a private man, not as a public man
(Socrates) - We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
- Such as thy words are, such will thine affections be esteemed and such as thine affections, will be thy deeds and such as thy deeds will be thy life
(Socrates) - 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) - My belief is that to have no wants is divine.
(Socrates) - 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) - 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) - Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.
(Socrates) - Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.
(Socrates) - Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.
(Socrates) - Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
(Socrates) - The soul, like the body, accepts by practice whatever habit one wishes it to contact.
(Socrates) - He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
(Socrates) - Be slow to fall into friendship; but when you are in, continue firm and constant.
(Socrates) - The hottest love has the coldest end.
(Socrates) - I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
(Socrates) - It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
(Socrates) - The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.
(Socrates) - Employ your time improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily to what others have labored hard for.
(Socrates) - Socrates is charged with corrupting the youth of the city, and with rejecting the gods of Athens and introducing new divinities.
(Socrates) - Suddenly there were people who came to realize that there must be some things that must be done about the natural environment.
(Socrates) - Contentment is natural wealth luxury, artificial poverty.
(Socrates)
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7 comments
Profoundly great collection of quotes.Great job.Jalal
Reblogged this on Cosmisian
Wow!! Tons of amazing Socrates quotes, thanks for the compile and sharing.
This quote makes me laugh: “my advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher”. Funny, but somehow it’s true… LOL!
:-))) Yes this quote is really funny and is one my favorites!
Thanks a lot for thesr wonderful..eye opening quotes…Thank U again..