Socrates Quotes
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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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Is it not, then, better to be ridiculous and friendly than clever and hostile?
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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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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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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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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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The individual leads in order that those who are led can develop their potential as human beings and thereby prosper.
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Wisest is he who knows he knows not.
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My divine sign indicates the future to me.
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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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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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Virtue does not come from wealth, but wealth, and every other good thing which men have comes from virtue.
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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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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.
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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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In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
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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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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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To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.
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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.
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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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Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show.
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The alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. They will trust the written characters and not remember themselves.