Socrates Quotes & Sayings

Envy is the ulcer of the soul. — Socrates

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils. — Socrates

Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show. — Socrates

The tongue of a fool is the key of his counsel, which, in a wise man, wisdom hath in keeping. — Socrates

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

There are two kinds of disease of the soul, vice and ignorance. — Socrates

If the soul is immortal, it demands our care not only for that part of time which we call life, but for all time: and indeed it would seem now that it will be extremely dangerous to neglect it. If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked. But since the soul is clearly immortal, it can have no escape or security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can. For it takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training: and these, we are told, are of supreme importance in helping or harming the newly dead at the very beginning of his journey there. — Socrates

It is only in death that we are truly cured of the 'sickness' of life. — Socrates

The end of life is to be like unto God; and the soul following God, will be like unto Him; He being the beginning, middle, and end of all things. — Socrates

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

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

If I can assign names as well as pictures to objects, the right assignment of them we may call truth, and the wrong assignment of them falsehood. — Socrates

All I know is that I do not know anything — Socrates

The answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am. — Socrates

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

Talk in order that I may see you. — Socrates

...[I]n any inquiry you are likely to attain more nearly to knowledge of your object in proportion to the care and accuracy with which you have prepared yourself to understand that object in itself[.] — Socrates

I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium ... I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of my senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better had recourse to ideas, and seek in them truth in existence. I dare to say that the simile is not perfect
for I am far from admitting that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas, sees them only "through a glass darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working and effects. — Socrates

Nothing very new. By taking good care of yourselves you are of service to me and my family as well as yourselves, no matter what you do, even if you don't think so at present. But if you neglect yourselves and are unwilling to live, as though following tracks, in accordance with what we now say and have said in the past too, then no matter how much or how seriously you agree with me at present you will accomplish next to nothing. — Socrates

Laws are not made for the good. — Socrates

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. — Socrates

They give you the semblance of success, I give you the reality ... — Socrates

No one can teach, if by teaching we mean the transmission of knowledge, in any mechanical fashion, from one person to another. The most that can be done is that one person who is more knowledgeable than another can, by asking a series of questions, stimulate the other to think, and so cause him to learn for himself. — Socrates

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

The greatest of all mysteries is the man himself. — Socrates

It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return. — Socrates

Life without enquiry is not worth living. — Socrates

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

There is no solution; seek it lovingly — Socrates

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

The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone. — Socrates

The Spirit is neither good nor bad, it runs where the wild heart leads" "Wisdom begins in wonder. — Socrates

...[B]y observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether... [like] when [people] watch and study an eclipse of the sun; they really do sometimes injure their eyes, unless they study its reflection in water or some other medium. — 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

Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen. — Socrates

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat. — Socrates

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

To express oneself badly is not only faulty as far as the language goes, but does some harm to the soul. — Socrates

The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it ... Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily. — Socrates

What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them? — Socrates

All I know is that I know nothing. — Socrates

It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen of the jury; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death. — 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

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

When a woman is allowed to become a man's equal, she becomes his superior. — Socrates

The man who is truly wise knows that he knows very little. — Socrates

Wisdom is knowing how little we know. — Socrates

Do not grieve over someone who changes all of the sudden. It might be that he has given up acting and returned to his true self. — Socrates

If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman. — Socrates

This is a universe that does not favor the timid. — Socrates

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

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

The hottest love has the coldest end. — Socrates

Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure — Socrates

An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all. — Socrates

The ancient 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. — Socrates

By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities. — Socrates

What a lot of things I don't need. — Socrates

There is no illness of the body except for the mind — Socrates

I know what I do not know. — Socrates

And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls. — Socrates

For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men, - that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. — Socrates

...{I]f everything that has some share of life were to die, and if after death the dead remained in that form and did not come to life again, would it not be quite inevitable that in the end everything should be dead and nothing alive?... [W]hat possible means could prevent their number from being exhausted by death? — Socrates

Whoever would have his body supple, easy and healthful should learn to dance. — Socrates

May the inward and outward man be as one. — Socrates

No one does wrong voluntarily. — Socrates

I am quite ready to acknowledge ... that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and good (of this I am as certain as I can be of any such matters), and to men departed who are better than those whom I leave behind. And therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead. — Socrates

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. — Socrates

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

Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers. — Socrates

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. — Socrates

When you propose ridiculous things to believe, too many men will choose to believe nothing at all. — 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

The perfect human being is all human beings put together, it is a collective, it is all of us together that make perfection. — Socrates

To use words and phrases in an easygoing manner without scrutinizing them too curiously is not in general a mark of ill-breeding. On the contrary, there is something low-bred in being too precise. But sometimes there is no help for it — Socrates

I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know. — Socrates

It is better to make a mistake with full force of your being than to carefully avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit. — Socrates

To Believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of ignorance and folly — Socrates

All of the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word. — Socrates

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

Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance. We are even comfortable with that ignorance, because it is all we know. When we first start facing truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives. But if you continue to seek truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better. In fact, you want more! It's true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don't care. Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant — Socrates

I only know, I know nothing — Socrates

The uninitiated are those who believe in nothing except what they can grasp in their hands, and who deny the existence of all that is invisible. — Socrates

When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery. — Socrates

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

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

Be of good hope in the face of death. Believe in this one truth for certain, that no evil can befall a good man either in life or death, and that his fate is not a matter of indifference to the gods. — Socrates

I neither know nor think that I know — Socrates

Silence is a profound melody, for those who can hear it above all the noise. — Socrates

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

If at first you don't succeed, avoid skydiving. — Socrates

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

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

Perhaps someone may say 'But surely, Socrates, after you have left us you can spend the rest of your life in quietly minding your own business.' This is the hardest thing of all to make some of you understand. If I say that this would be disobedience to God, and that is why I cannot 'mind my own business', you will not believe that I am serious. If on the other hand I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is, gentlemen, as I maintain; though it is not easy to convince you of it. — Socrates

But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living; which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God. — Socrates

There is no greater magnificence than to defeat oneself. That is the magnificence ... — Socrates

Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding? — Socrates

Regard your good name as the richest jewel yoou can possibly be possessed of. — Socrates

Beloved Pan and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the outward and the inner man be at one. — Socrates

Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary? — Socrates