Socrates quotes

“As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.”

“Be as you wish to seem.”

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

“Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”

“Be true to thine own self.”

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”

“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”

“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”

“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”

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

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”

“Envy is the ulcer of the soul.”

“Every action has its pleasures and its price.”

“Everyone wants to tell you what to do and what’s good for you. They don’t want you to find your own answers, they want you to believe theirs.”

“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”

“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”

“He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.”

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”

“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”

“How many things can I do without?”

“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

“I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others.”

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”

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

“Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.”

“It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.”

“Know thyself.”

“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”

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

“Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they're fools, and fools who think they are wise.”

“May the inward and outward man be as one.”

“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.”

“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.”

“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.”

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

“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”

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

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

“The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.”

“The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

“The highest form of human excellence is to question.”

“The hottest love has the coldest end.”

“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.”

“The mind is everything; what you think you become.”

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

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

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

“The things that screw us up the most in life is the picture in our heads of what it’s supposed to be.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

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

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”

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

“Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.”

“Those who are hardest to love need it the most.”

“Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.”

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”

“To move the world, we must first move ourselves.”

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

“Understanding a question is half an answer.”

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

“We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.”

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

“Wisdom begins in wonder.”