Socrates Quotes

“For who is there but you? - who not only claim to be a good man and a gentleman, for many are this, and yet have not the power of making others good. Whereas you are not only good yourself, but also the cause of goodness in others.”

“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.”

“If you will be guided by me, you will make little account of Socrates, and much more of truth.”

“The examined life is the only life worth living.”

“A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.”

“Listen not to a tale-bearer or slanderer, for he tells thee nothing out of good-will; but as he discovereth of the secrets of others, so he will of thine in turn.”

“I know nothing but the certainty of my own ignorance.”

“Trust not a woman when she weeps, for it is her nature to weep when she wants her will.”

“May I consider the wise man rich, and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure.”

“In my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable.”

“When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.”

“All that I know is nothing - I'm not even sure of that.”

“By all implies marry if you get a great wife/husband, you are going to be pleased. If you get a bad a single, you are going to become a philosopher.”

“If you can do only a little. Do what you can. What you cannot enforce, do not command.”

“A man can no more make a safe use of wealth without reason than he can of a horse without a bridle.”

“Get not your friends by bare compliments but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.”

“Fear of women love more than hate the man.”

“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”

“Man's life is like a drop of dew on a leaf.”

“Malice drinketh up the greater part of its own poison.”

“A free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly, for nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind.”

“In every sort of danger there are various ways of winning through, if one is ready to do and say anything whatever.”

“The universe really is motion & nothing else.”

“To use words and phrases in an easygoing manner without scrutinizing them too curiously is not in general a mark of ill-breeding. On the contrary, there is something low-bred in being too precise. But sometimes there is no help for it”

“You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.”