Socrates Quotes
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I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?
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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?
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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.
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Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.
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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.
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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.
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Living or dead, to a good man there can come no evil.
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When you propose ridiculous things to believe, too many men will choose to believe nothing at all.
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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.
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Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth.
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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.
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It has been shown that to injure anyone is never just anywhere.
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A man can no more make a safe use of wealth without reason than he can of a horse without a bridle.
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Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happyas possible.
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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.
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A system of morality that is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception that has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
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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.
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What a lot of things there are a man can do without.
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It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.
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Either I do not corrupt the young or, if I do, it is unwillingly.