Socrates Quotes
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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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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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To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
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Wisest is he who knows he knows not.
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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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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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Man's life is like a drop of dew on a leaf.
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You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve.
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Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm & constant.
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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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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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To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.
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Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites?
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Let us reflect in this way, too, that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocation for the soul from here to another place.
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You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.
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Beloved Pan and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and the inward man be one.
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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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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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The bad one is that way because of the ignorance, therefore he can be healed with wisdom.
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Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show.
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The cure of many diseases remains unknown to the physicians of Hellos (Greece) because they do not study the whole person.
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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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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 alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. They will trust the written characters and not remember themselves.