Socrates Quotes

“The reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.”

“Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.”

“Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show.”

“When our feet hurt, we hurt all over.”

“The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.”

“Do not grieve over someone who changes all of the sudden. It might be that he has given up acting and returned to his true self.”

“Antiphon, as another man gets pleasure from a good horse, or a dog, or a bird, I get even more pleasure from good friends. And if I have something good, I teach it to them, and I introduce them to others who will be useful to them with respect to virtue. And together with my friends I go through the treasures of wise men of old which they left behind written in books, and we peruse them. If we see something good, we pick it out and hold it to be a great profit, if we are able to prove useful to one another.”

“It is better to make a mistake with full force of your being than to carefully avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit.”

“Do you suppose that I should have lived as long as I have if I had moved in the sphere of public life, and conducting myself in that sphere like an honorable man, had always upheld the cause of right, and conscientiously set this end above all other things? Not by a very long way, gentlemen; neither would any other man.”

“Be as you wish to seem.”

“To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.”

“I have lived long enough to learn how much there is I can really do without.... He is nearest to God who needs the fewest things.”

“Flattery is like friendship in show, but not in fruit.”

“Fellow citizens, why do you burn and scrape every stone to gather wealth and take so little care of your children to whom you must one day relinquish all?”

“Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires.”

“To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. For a man who claims to have knowledge, while actually knowing nothing, is less smarter than you, who claim to know nothing.”

“Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?”

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

“The first key to greatness is to be in reality what we appear to be.”

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

“To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”

“I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.”

“The friend must be like money, that before you need it, the value is known.”

“Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many things I have no need of!'”

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