H S Socrates Quotes & Sayings

Is something good because the gods approve of it? Or do the gods approve of it because it is good? — Socrates

You won't find peace with another, until you become one person--not two. — Shannon L. Alder

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well? — Kurt Vonnegut

For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. I — Plato

There is also a tradition about Socrates. He liked walking, it is recorded, until a late hour of the evening, and when someone asked him why he did this he said he was trying to work up an appetite for his dinner. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

While Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul,Christ exclaims,'If it is possible, let this cup pass from me'.Christ in this respect is the self- confession of human sensibility. — Ludwig Feuerbach

We have never sought power. We have sought to disperse power, to set men and women free. That really means: to help them to discover that they are free. Everybody's free. The slave is free. The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences. 'Fear is failure.' 'The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.' Thou hast no right but to do thy will.' The goose can break the bottle at any second. Socrates took the hemlock to prove it. Jesus went to the cross to prove it. It's in all history, all myth, all poetry. It's right out in the open all the time. — Robert Anton Wilson

The bad one is that way because of the ignorance, therefore he can be healed with wisdom. — Socrates

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better. — Socrates

Not because Socrates said so, ... I look upon all men as my compatriots. — Michel De Montaigne

It's a curious thing that the mental life seems to flourish with its roots in spite, ineffable and fathomless spite. Always has been so! Look at Socrates, in Plato, and his bunch round him! The sheer spite of it all, just sheer joy in pulling somebody else to bits...Protagoras, or whoever it was! And Alcibiades, and all the other little disciple dogs joining in the fray! I must say it makes one prefer Buddha, quietly sitting under a bo-tree, or Jesus, telling his disciples little Sunday stories, peacefully, and without any mental fireworks. No, there's something wrong with the mental life, radically. It's rooted in spite and envy, envy and spite. Ye shall know the tree by its fruit. — D.H. Lawrence

The world's a puzzle; no need to make sense out of it. - Socrates — Dan Millman

The story is told of Socrates walking through the market in Athens, with its groaning abundance of options, and saying to himself, "Who would have thought that there could be so many things that I can do without?"4 — Os Guinness

Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain. — Clifton Fadiman

If you will take my advice you will think little of Socrates, and a great deal more of truth. — Socrates

Though it may be the peculiar happiness of Socrates and other geniuses of his stamp, to reason themselves into virtue, the human species would long ago have ceased to exist, had it depended entirely for its preservation on the reasonings of the individuals that compose it. Par 1, 36 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No one does wrong voluntarily. — Socrates

The time has come for writers, especially those who are artists, to admit that in this world one cannot make anything out, just as Socrates once admitted it, just as Voltaire admitted it. — Anton Chekhov

O we have not choice but to agree that in each of us are found the same elements and characteristics as are found in the city? After all, where else could the city have got them from? — Socrates

Again and again the schools which form the twentieth century's elites throughout the West refer to their Socratic heritage. The implication is that doubt is constantly raised in their search for truth. In reality the way they teach is the opposite of a Socratic dialogue. In the Athenian's case every answer raised a question. With the contemporary elites every question produces an answer. Socrates would have thrown the modern elites out of his academy. — John Ralston Saul

If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all. — Socrates

Improve yourself by other men's writings thus attaining effortlessly what they acquired through great difficulty. — 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

In the life of the individual man, virtue is the sole good; such things as health, happiness, possessions, are of no account. Since virtue resides in the will, everything really good or bad in a man's life depends only upon himself. He may become poor, but what of it? He can still be virtuous. A tyrant may put him in prison, but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature. He may be sentenced to death, but he can die nobly, like Socrates. Therefore every man has perfect freedom, provided he emancipates himself from mundane desires. Stoicism — Piper Kerman

We must beware of whatever insights we have into ourselves. Our self-knowledge annoys and paralyzes our daimon-this is where we should look for the reason Socrates wrote nothing. — Emil Cioran

I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate. ( Socrates , I believe, saw something of this when he suggested that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to mistrust or hatred of man). — Karl Popper

Socrates held up his hands, wiggling his fingers. God gave me these hands to change the world, one child at a time. — Red Phoenix

Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. — Socrates

Lies are the greatest murder. They kill the Truth. — Socrates

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

Therapy isn't curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human. Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, "This is me and the world be damned!" Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society Socrates , Christ , Freud , all the way down the line. — Rollo May

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said
and did not say. — Friedrich Nietzsche

all started at the Temple of Apollo In Delphi. One of his friends approached the oracle with the question: "Is anyone wiser than Socrates?" the answer was "No." Socrates was profoundly puzzled by this episode. He claimed to know — Plato