Socratic Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

[I]t's necessary to exert very great foresight every time you go to blame or praise a man, so that you won't speak incorrectly ... For you shouldn't suppose that, while stones are sacred and pieces of wood, and birds, and snakes, human beings are not. Rather of all these things, the most sacred is the good human being, while the most polluted is the wicked.
Speech attributed to Socrates in Plato, Minos 319a, trans. Thomas L. Pangle, in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 63. — Plato

Answer all the questions. Question all the answers. — Laurie Gray

To find the truth, try to follow the Socratic method. Just don't forget to follow your intuition and imagination. — Debasish Mridha

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change ... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real. — Philip K. Dick

The Alexandrian Library was a tragedy of some moment, for it was believed to contain the complete published works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, and a hundred others, who have come down to us in mangled form; full texts of the pre-Socratic philosophers, who survive only in snatches; and thousands of volumes of Greek, Egyptian, and Roman history, science, literature, and philosophy. — Will Durant

There was no law that explicitly banned women from driving in Saudi Arabia. There is none today - the Kingdom's notorious female driving ban is a matter of social convention, fortified by some ferocious religious pressures. So some Saudi women started looking thoughtfully at their Kuwaiti sisters. — Robert Lacey

It is extraordinary to think about. We still speak of Socratic or Platonic philosophy, but actually being Plato or Socrates is quite another matter. — Jostein Gaarder

There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes. — Allan Bloom

Pre-Socratic philosophy begins ... with the discovery of Nature; Socratic philosophy begins with the discovery of man's soul."3 — William B. Irvine

If you live your life worried about the what-ifs, you're going to live a very desolate life. — Katherine Bogle

The wise form right judgment of the present from what is past. — Sophocles

I let go of false hope. I let go of the hope that they would transform in favour of working on my own transformation. I let go of the hope that they would HEAR me. I let go of the hope that they would SEE me. Instead of my hope being in THEM, I listened to me. I heard me, I saw me, I validated my own pain and I began to emerge from the broken life I had been living. — Darlene Ouimet

I hate those Socratic dialogues where everything gets drawn out at the pace of an excessively logical snail. — Jo Walton

Mann's Death in Venice actually contains a snippet of philosophy about the second question, when Aschenbach, collapsed in the plaza, engages in his quasi-Socratic, anti-Socratic, ruminations. — Philip Kitcher

Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch or you might simply get covered in sap and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors where it is harder to get a splinter. — Lemony Snicket

Owning your curves means being confident - actually being confident - in your own skin. — Meghan Trainor

Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing? — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Contemporary philosophy illustrates Hegel's dictum that philosophy is its own time apprehended in thought, for in our age philosophy yields to the objectifying technical impulse and loses its ancient task of pursuing the Socratic ideal of the wisdom of the examined life. — Donald Phillip Verene

Eye-rolling is not exactly the pinnacle of socratic investigation. — Stefan Molyneux

Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], ... Thinking serves life, while among all previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge ... Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications. — Friedrich Nietzsche