Socrates

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

— Socrates

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.

— Socrates

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

— Socrates

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

If I tell you that I would be disobeying the god and on that account it is impossible for me to keep quiet, you won't be persuaded by me, taking it that I am ionizing. And if I tell you that it is the greatest good for a human being to have discussions every day about virtue and the other things you hear me talking about, examining myself and others, and that the unexamined life is not livable for a human being, you will be even less persuaded.

— Socrates

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.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober -- minded men.

— Socrates

An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

— Socrates

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

— Socrates

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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.

— Socrates

Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.

— Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.

— Socrates

Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.

— Socrates

Call no man unhappy until he is married.

— Socrates

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

— Socrates

Let him that would move the world, first move himself.

— Socrates

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

— Socrates

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.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

An unexamined life is not worth living.

— Socrates

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

— Socrates

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.

— Socrates

The hottest love has the coldest end.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.

— Socrates

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

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.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

How many are the things I can do without!

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

— Socrates

Know thyself.

— Socrates

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.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

To find yourself, think for yourself.

— Socrates

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

— Socrates

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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.

— Socrates

Other men live to eat, while I eat to live.

— Socrates

Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth

— Socrates

Naturam rerum cognoscere primum. "First know the nature of things" or "Get your facts straight first".

— Socrates

Sidere mens eadum mutato. "The stars may be different, but the spirit is the same.

— Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

— Socrates

An unexamined life is not worth living.

— Socrates