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You never know a line is crooked unless you have a straight one to put next to it.
Socrates
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Do you suppose that I should have lived as long as I have if I had moved in the sphere of public life, and conducting myself in that sphere like an honorable man, had always upheld the cause of right, and conscientiously set this end above all other things? Not by a very long way, gentlemen; neither would any other man.
Socrates
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Athletics have become professionalized.
Socrates
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There is no difference between knowledge and temperance; for he who knows what is good and embraces it, who knows what is bad and avoids it, is learned and temperate.
Socrates
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The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be interested in realities and not in imitations; and would desire to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair; and, instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them.
Socrates
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Who knows if to live is to be dead, and to be dead, to live? And we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb.
Socrates
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What a lot of things I don't need.
Socrates
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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.
Socrates
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Virtue is the nursing-mother of all human pleasures, who, in rendering them just, renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in breath and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our desires to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if not to lassitude.
Socrates
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The duller eye may often see a thing sooner than the keener.
Socrates
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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
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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.
Socrates
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Living or dead, to a good man there can come no evil.
Socrates
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One cannot come closer to the gods than by bringing health to his Fellow Man.
Socrates
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By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.
Socrates
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If we pursue our habit of eating animals, and if our neighbour follows a similar path, will we need to go to war against our neighbour to secure greater pasturage, because ours will not be enough to sustain us, and our neighbour will have a similar need to wage war on us for the same reason.
Socrates
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Fellow citizens, why do you burn and scrape every stone to gather wealth and take so little care of your children to whom you must one day relinquish all?
Socrates
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I will not yield to any man contrary to what is right, for fear of death, even if I should die at once for not yielding.
Socrates
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Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.
Socrates
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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
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Besides, it is a shame to let yourself grow old through neglect before seeing how you can develop the maximum beauty and strength of body; and you can have this experience if your are negligent, because these things don't normally happen by themselves.
Socrates
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If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.
Socrates
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I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can...And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same...I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
Socrates
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I call myself a Peaceful Warrior... because the battles we fight are on the inside.
Socrates
