Socrates

SocratesSocrates (?-399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. [Українська] [Русский]

Socrates Quotes

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

—Socrates

No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.

—Socrates

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent.

Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

—Socrates

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

—Socrates

Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle.

—Socrates

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

—Socrates

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

—Socrates

Those who are confident without knowledge are not courageous, but mad.

—Socrates

How much there is in the world I do not want.

—Socrates

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

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

—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

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

—Socrates

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

—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 was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

To find yourself, think for yourself.

—Socrates

Thou should eat to live; not live to eat.

—Socrates

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

—Socrates

Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.

—Socrates

The value of a man is measured in the number of those who stand beside him, not those who follow.

—Socrates

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

—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