Socrates quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Socrates

Socrates Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Socrates on Wise Famous Quotes.

I prefer to be refuted than to refute, for it is a greater good for oneself to be freed from the greatest evil than to free another.

The years wrinkle our skin, but lack of enthusiasm wrinkles our soul.

The alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. They will trust the written characters and not remember themselves.

It seems that God took away the minds of poets that they might better express His.

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

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

The wise man seeks death all his life, and for this reason death is not terrifying to him.

Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many things I have no need of!'

If you want to be wrong then follow the masses.

The great honor in the world is to be what we pretend to be

Either I do not corrupt the young or, if I do, it is unwillingly.

The really important thing is not live, but to live well.

Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.

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

The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.

Lies are the greatest murder. They kill the Truth.

Anybody can be a hellene, by his heart, his mind, his spirit ...

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

The misuse of language induces evil in the soul

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

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.

It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.

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

So you would rather suffer an injustice than do an injustice?

Man's greatest privilege is the discussion of virtue Socrates in The Apology.

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

Not I, but the city teaches.

The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.

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

Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happyas possible.

Improve yourself by other men's writings thus attaining effortlessly what they acquired through great difficulty.

One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one may have suffered from them.

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

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

He who would change the world should first change himself.

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

The soul, like the body, accepts by practice whatever habit one wishes it to contact.

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

If he who does not know kept silent, discord would cease.

There's no good answer to a question you didn't hear

Knowledge is our ultimate good.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny

To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.

I know what I do not know.

To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.

Athletics have become professionalized.

The individual leads in order that those who are led can develop their potential as human beings and thereby prosper.

I call that man idle who might be better employed.

Follow the argument wherever it leads.

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

To give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god .

Obscurity is dispelled by augmenting the light of discernment, not by attacking the darkness.

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

If one knows what is right, he will do it; nobody wants to be evil

Every action has its pleasures and its price.

Better to do a little well, then a great deal badly.

There is no solution; seek it lovingly

The definition of terms is the beginning of wisdom.

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

Whatever authority I may have rests solely on knowing how little I know.

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

A free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly, for nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind.

Only the knowledge that comes from inside is the real Knowledge

If the whole world depends on today's youth, I can't see the world lasting another 100 years.

I only know how little I know

The more I learn, the less I realize I know.

Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.

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

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

No man has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training

This is ... self-knowled ge-for a man to know what he knows, and what he does not know.

Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

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

The same wind is blowing, and yet one of us may be cold and the other not.

Be true to thine own self

In every sort of danger there are various ways of winning through, if one is ready to do and say anything whatever.

What screws us up the most in life is the picture in our head of what it's supposed to be.

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

Talk in order that I may see you.

Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.

If you will take my advice you will think little of Socrates, and a great deal more of truth.

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

The life of which meaning one never ponders is not worth living

A man can no more make a safe use of wealth without reason than he can of a horse without a bridle.

Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state

Marry a good woman, and be happy the rest of your life. Or, marry a bad, and become a good philosopher

To need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer does he approach to divinity.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.

Nobody knows anything, but I, knowing nothing, am the smartest man in the world.

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

Man must rise above the Earth - to the top of the atmosphere and beyond - for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.

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

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Man's life is like a drop of dew on a leaf.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

Wisdom adorneth riches and casteth a shadow over poverty.

Nothing is so well learned as that which is discovered.