Socrates Quotes
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Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.
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The best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst.
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My divine sign indicates the future to me.
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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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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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I have lived long enough to learn how much there is I can really do without.... He is nearest to God who needs the fewest things.
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In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
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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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The individual leads in order that those who are led can develop their potential as human beings and thereby prosper.
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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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Wisest is he who knows he knows not.
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Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm & constant.
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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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Before the birth of Love, many fearful things took place through the empire of necessity; but when this god was born, all things rose to men.
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To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.
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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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Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show.
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I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.
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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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The alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. They will trust the written characters and not remember themselves.
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The beginning is the most important part, especially when dealing with anything young and tender.
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...one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act: that is, that we shall be better, braver and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don't know than if we believe there is no point in looking because what we don't know we can never discover.
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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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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.