Socrates Quotes
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If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.
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Beauty comes first. Victory is secondary. What matters is joy.
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If I had engaged in politics, O men of Athens, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself.
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My divine sign indicates the future to me.
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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.
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To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not. For it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest blessings of human beings. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil.
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To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
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The soul then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all . . . all enquiry and all learning is but recollection.
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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.
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For who is there but you? - who not only claim to be a good man and a gentleman, for many are this, and yet have not the power of making others good. Whereas you are not only good yourself, but also the cause of goodness in others.
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By all implies marry if you get a great wife-husband, you are going to be pleased. If you get a bad a single, you are going to become a philosopher.
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And the same things look bent and straight when seen in water and out of it, and also both concave and convex, due to the sight's being mislead by the colors, and every sort of confusion of this kind is plainly in our soul. And, then, it is because they take advantage of this affection in our nature that shadow painting, and puppeteering, and many other tricks of the kind fall nothing short of wizardry.
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Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.
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If you would seek health, look first to the spine.
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The best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst.
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The partisan when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.
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I prefer to be refuted than to refute, for it is a greater good for oneself to be freed from the greatest evil than to free another.
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Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.
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The tongue of a fool is the key of his counsel, which, in a wise man, wisdom hath in keeping.
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Wisest is he who knows he knows not.
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Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober - minded men.
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Antiphon, as another man gets pleasure from a good horse, or a dog, or a bird, I get even more pleasure from good friends. And if I have something good, I teach it to them, and I introduce them to others who will be useful to them with respect to virtue. And together with my friends I go through the treasures of wise men of old which they left behind written in books, and we peruse them. If we see something good, we pick it out and hold it to be a great profit, if we are able to prove useful to one another.
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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, 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.
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Is it not, then, better to be ridiculous and friendly than clever and hostile?