Socrates

Socrates

Socrates (470/469 – 399 BC) was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method.

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The unexamined life is not worth living.

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

By all means marry. If you get a good wife you'll become happy, if you get a bad one you'll become a philosopher.

An honest man is always a child.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

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

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

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

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

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

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

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.

Be as you wish to seem.

Not life but good life is to be chiefly valued.

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.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you 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.

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

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

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

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

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

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

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

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

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.

Once made equal to man woman becomes his superior.

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

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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

It is not living that matters but living rightly.

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

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

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

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

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury for on no account can it be right to do an injustice, and it is not right to return an injury or to do evil to any man however much we have suffered from him.

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

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

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.

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