Socrates Quotes

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

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.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.

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

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

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

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

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

Envy is the ulcer of the soul.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

The hottest love has the coldest end.

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

Be as you wish to seem.

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.

The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.

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.

Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of - for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

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

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

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

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

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.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.

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

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

Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding onto.

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?

Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods.

Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.

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.

He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who might be better employed.

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

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

I only know one thing, and that is I know nothing

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

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.

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

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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.

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

Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of.

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

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

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

I know nothing but the certainty of my own ignorance.

How many things are there which I do not want.

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

Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat.

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

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

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

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

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.

And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

Wind buffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.

You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve.

The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

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

Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

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.

He is the richest who is content with the least.

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

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

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

I swear it upon Zeus an outstanding runner cannot be the equal of an average wrestler.

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

The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.

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.

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

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

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

My belief is that to have no wants is divine.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world.

Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.