Socrates Quotations

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. For a man who claims to have knowledge, while actually knowing nothing, is less smarter than you, who claim to know nothing.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice.

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.

Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.

We too must endure and persevere in the inquiry, and then courage will not laugh at our faintheartedness in searching for courage; which after all may, very likely, be endurance.

Such as thy words are, such will thine affections be esteemed; and such as thine affections, will be thy deeds; and such as thy deeds will be thy life

Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.

Virtue does not come from wealth, but. . . wealth, and every other good thing which men have. . . comes from virtue.

Smart people learn from everything and everyone, Average people from their experiences, Stupid people already have all the answers.

The Delphic oracle said I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Enjoy yourself -- it's later than you think.

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.

Woman once made equal to man becomes his superior

Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.

Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance

There is only one good -- knowledge; and only one evil -- ignorance.

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher and that is a good thing for any man.

By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher. Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

How many are the things I can do without!

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.

Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance. We are even comfortable with that ignorance, because it is all we know. When we first start facing truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives. But if you continue to seek truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better. In fact, you want more! It's true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don't care. Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen.

Whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man - whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyse the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.

There are two kinds of disease of the soul, vice and ignorance.

I am a Citizen of the World, and my Nationality is Goodwill.

No one can teach, if by teaching we mean the transmission of knowledge, in any mechanical fashion, from one person to another. The most that can be done is that one person who is more knowledgeable than another can, by asking a series of questions, stimulate the other to think, and so cause him to learn for himself.

Obligation sends the children to bed on time, but love tucks the covers in around their necks and passes out kisses and hugs. Yesterday is about experience; tomorrow is about hope; today is about transitioning from one to the other. The happiest people on earth don't have the best of everything... they make the best of everything I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

Happiness is unrepented pleasure.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles.

Silence is a profound melody, for those who can hear it above all the noise.

Knowing thyself is the height of wisdom.

Understanding a question is half an answer.

I call myself a Peaceful Warrior... because the battles we fight are on the inside

Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.

When a woman is allowed to become a man's equal, she becomes his superior.

If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Get married, in any case. If you happen to get a good mate, you will be happy; if a bad one, you will become philosophical, which is a fine thing in itself.

There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend.

All wars are fought for the acquisition of wealth

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?

We can do nothing without the body, let us always take care that it is in the best condition to sustain us.

When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery.

Lies are the greatest murder. They kill the Truth.

The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion.

In every person there is a sun. Just let them shine.

He is the richest who is content with the least.

Let the questions be the curriculum.