Socrates Quotes

A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.

We shall be better, braver, and more active if we believe it right to look for what we don't know.

The bad one is that way because of the ignorance, therefore he can be healed with wisdom.

I know nothing but the certainty of my own ignorance.

One cannot come closer to the gods than by bringing health to his Fellow Man.

By all implies marry if you get a great wife/husband, you are going to be pleased. If you get a bad a single, you are going to become a philosopher.

It has been shown that to injure anyone is never just anywhere.

The duller eye may often see a thing sooner than the keener.

The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.

No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.

...[R]eal wisdom is the property of God, and... human wisdom has little or no value.

...[S]ome of the opinions which people entertain should be respected, and others should not.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

I am convinced that I never wrong anyone intentionally...

The only thing I know is that I know nothing, and i am no quite sure that i know that.

...[M]en are put in a sort of guard-post, from which one must not release one's self or run away...

...[T]he really important thing is not to live, but to live well... [a]nd to live well means the same thing as to live honourably or rightly...

Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgments which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons?

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

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

Know thyself.

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

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

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

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?

Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is.

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

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

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.

Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

A strong woman will automatically stoptrying if she feels unwanted. She won't fix it or beg, she'll just walk away.

How many things can I do without?

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

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

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire the other is to get it.

If I save my insight, I don’t attend to weakness of eyesight.

Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.

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

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

[Based upon the message of "nothing new under the sun" in Ecclesiastes, ] If nothing ever changes, then God has no plan.

Beauty, like an animal, doesn’t always behave.

A man who preserves his integrity no real, long-lasting harm can ever come.

Philosophy may be blind without science, but science can lack vision without philosophy.

Be true to thine own self

Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.

The misuse of language induces evil in the soul

My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves" -Socrates

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.

...a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods.