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It is best and easiest not to discredit others but to prepare oneself to be as good as possible.
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
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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.
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 -
The soul, like the body, accepts by practice whatever habit one wishes it to contact.
Socrates -
One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.
Socrates -
To move the world we must move ourselves.
Socrates -
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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How many things I can do without!
Socrates -
Neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.
Socrates -
If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all.
Socrates -
I only know one thing, and that is I know nothing.
Socrates -
Not by wisdom do they poets make what they compose, but by a gift of nature and an inspiration similar to that of the diviners and the oracles.
Socrates -
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Socrates
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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.
Socrates -
Since I am convinced that I wrong no one, I am not likely to wrong myself.
Socrates