Best Socrates Quotes, Advice And Thoughts
Socrates was an old-style Greek (Athenian) rationalist credited as one of the originators of the Western way of thinking, and similar to the primary good scholar of the Western moral convention of an idea. A cryptic figure, he made no compositions and is known mainly through the records of old-style journalists composing after his lifetime, especially his understudies Plato and Xenophon. Different sources incorporate the contemporaneous Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Aeschines of Sphettos. Aristophanes, a writer, is the primary contemporary writer to have composed plays referencing Socrates during Socrates’ lifetime, however, a part of Ion of Chios’ Travel Journal gives significant data about Socrates’ childhood.
Here are some of the Best Socrates Quotes And Advice
“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.”
“They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.”
“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” – Socrates Quotes
“Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.”
“I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.”
“How many are the things I can do without!” – Socrates Quotes
“I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.”
“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 Quotes
“The hottest love has the coldest end.”
“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 Quotes
“See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.” – Socrates Quotes
“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.”
“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 Quotes
“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.”
“I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.” – Socrates Quotes
“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”
“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 Quotes
“In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.” – Socrates Quotes
“The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.” – Socrates Quotes
“Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely neither of us has any knowledge too 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 Quotes
“Nothing is to be preferred before justice.”
“Nothing is to be preferred before justice.” – Socrates Quotes
“Let him that would move the world, first move himself.”
“The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.” – Socrates Quotes
“I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”
“Call no man unhappy until he is married.” – Socrates Quotes
“Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates Quotes
“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.”
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” – Socrates Quotes
“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.”
“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.” – Socrates Quotes
“The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.”
“Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
“Enjoy yourself — it’s later than you think.”
“Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”
“Once made equal to man, a woman becomes his superior.”
“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” – Socrates Quotes
“Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.”
“The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.”
“The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbour.” – Socrates Quotes
“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”
“An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.” – Socrates Quotes
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
“The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.”
“Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.”
“A multitude of books distracts the mind.”
“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.”
“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 Quotes
“What a lot of things there are a man can do without.” – Socrates Quotes
50th of 100 Quotes By Socrates
“Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.”
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
“Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.”
“He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.”
“Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.”
“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” – Socrates Quotes
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
“Every action has its pleasures and its price.” – Socrates Quotes
“Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of.”
“Be as you wish to seem.”
“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
“Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”
“I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.”
“Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?” – Socrates Quotes
“Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity or undue depression in adversity.”
“Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.”
“We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.”
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
“Smart people learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences, stupid people already have all the answers.”
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” – Socrates Quotes
“The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.”
“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”
“Silence is a profound melody, for those who can hear it above all the noise.”
“There are two kinds of disease of the soul, vice and ignorance.”
“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 Quotes
“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” – Socrates Quotes
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”
“Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.” – Socrates Quotes
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
“Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen.” – Socrates Quotes
“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
“Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.”
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” – Socrates Quotes
“Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle.”
“All wars are fought for the acquisition of wealth.” – Socrates Quotes
“Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.”
“If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.” – Socrates Quotes
“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.”
“Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.”
“Understanding a question is half the answer.”
“The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
“If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.”
“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.” – Socrates Quotes
100th of 100 Best Socrates Quotes
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