Socrates

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.

—Socrates

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

—Socrates

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

—Socrates

Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.

—Socrates

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

—Socrates

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

—Socrates

Those who are hardest to love, need it the most.

—Socrates

The mind is everything; what you think you become.

—Socrates

An unexamined life is not worth living.

—Socrates

The secret to happiness, you see, is not in gaining more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

—Socrates

Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.

—Socrates

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.

—Socrates

Every action has its pleasures and its prices.

—Socrates

Through your rags I see your vanity.

—Socrates

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.

—Socrates

The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.

—Socrates

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice.

—Socrates

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.

—Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

—Socrates

Every action has its pleasures and its price.

—Socrates

Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.

—Socrates

I call myself a peaceful warrior because the battles we fight are on the inside.

—Socrates

Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

I wander about in unending perplexity…

—Socrates