Socrates Quotes
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It is commonly a dangerous thing for a man to have more sense than his neighbors. Socrates paid for his superiority with his life; and if Aristotle saved his skin, it was by taking to his heels in time.
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The artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled sculptor, Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] the good musician, and the immortal Poussin, tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason.
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It must be granted that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii. When we say, All men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal; it is unanswerably urged by the adversaries of the syllogistic theory, that the proposition, Socrates is mortal.
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All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat.
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So at that time of day when the early sun still rings haloes on human heads, Socrates is walking through the Agora to his judgement day.
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Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.
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Socrates was the greatest of the educationalists, but unlike the others he taught gratuitously, though he was a poor man. His teachings always took the form of discussion; the discussion often ended in no positive result, but had the effect of showing that some received opinion was untenable and the truth is difficult to ascertain.
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It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
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I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.
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In Socrates’ lifetime more than 800 triremes were launched from Athenian-controlled harbours: the largest manned navy the world had ever known.
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Socrates.- If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason... The pathways of the most various philosophical modes of life lead back to him... Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.
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It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word -- on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.
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That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless.
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He could very likely have appealed for leniency. At least he could have saved his life by agreeing to leave Athens. But had he done this he would not have been Socrates. He valued his conscience--and the truth-- higher than life.
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He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.
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Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state.
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The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.
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Socrates said, our only knowledge was "To know that nothing could be known;" a pleasant Science enough, which levels to an ass Each Man of Wisdom, future, past, or present. Newton, (that Proverb of the Mind,) alas! Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent, That he himself felt only "like a youth Picking up shells by the great Ocean-Truth."
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None of us has the right to assess the value of a human existence. All must be held valuable, or none. The death of Christ and the death of Socrates," Fen added dryly, "suggest that our judgements are scarcely infallible...And the evil of Nazism lay precisely in this, that a group of men began to differentiate between the value of their fellow-beings, and to act on their conclusions. It isn't a habit which I, for one, would like to encourage.
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One is not unpopular because he uses peculiar expressions; that just so happens; such terms become a fad, and by and by everybody, down to the last simpleton, uses them. But a person who follows through an idea in his mind is, and always will be, essentially unpopular. That is why Socrates was unpopular, though he did not use any special terms, for to grasp and hold his 'ignorance' requires greater vital effort than understanding the whole of Hegel's philosophy.
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If you will take my advice you will think little of Socrates, and a great deal more of truth.
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It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.
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Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's bill breaking the egg, and it leads forward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of Socrates.
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Socrates said that, from above, the Earth looks like one of those twelve-patched leathern balls.
