Socrates Quotes
-
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.
-
Wisest is he who knows he knows not.
-
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.
-
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
-
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?
-
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.
-
The individual leads in order that those who are led can develop their potential as human beings and thereby prosper.
-
To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.
-
The alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. They will trust the written characters and not remember themselves.
-
...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.
-
The beginning is the most important part, especially when dealing with anything young and tender.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.
-
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.
-
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.
-
My divine sign indicates the future to me.
-
Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show.
-
Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.
-
Not I, but the city teaches.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Through your rags I see your vanity.