Socrates Quotes
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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.
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Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?
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To give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.
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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.
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I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence.
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Listen not to a tale-bearer or slanderer, for he tells thee nothing out of good-will; but as he discovereth of the secrets of others, so he will of thine in turn.
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Why do you wonder that globetrotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason that set you wandering is ever at your heels.
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I am very conscious that I am not wise at all.
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Why should I resent it when an ass kicks me?
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When our feet hurt, we hurt all over.
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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.
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Such as thy words are, such will thy affections be esteemed; and such will thy deeds be as thy affections and such thy life as thy deeds.
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It is a base thing for a man to wax old in careless self-neglect before he has lifted up his eyes and seen what manner of man he was made to be, in the full perfection of bodily strength and beauty. But these glories are withheld from him who is guilty of self-neglect, for they are not wont to blaze forth unbidden.
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Anybody can be a hellene, by his heart, his mind, his spirit.
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One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.
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In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
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Improve yourself by other men's writings thus attaining effortlessly what they acquired through great difficulty.
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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.
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A disorderly mob is no more an army than a heap of building materials is a house.
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One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one may have suffered from them.
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Through your rags I see your vanity.
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Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.
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What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?
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Not I, but the city teaches.