111 Brilliant Socrates Quotes (the Founder of Western Philosophy)
Socrates (born 470 BC, Alopece – died 399 BC, Classical Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher who is regarded as the founder of Western philosophy and one of the earliest moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. He is an enigmatic figure who did not author any text but known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon.
Socrates is best known for his association with the Socratic method of question and answer, his claim that he was ignorant (or aware of his own absence of knowledge), and his claim that the unexamined life is not worth living, for human beings.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen.The unexamined life is not worth living.I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.Nothing is so well learned as that which is discovered.The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.To find yourself, think for yourself.He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.I call myself a peaceful warrior because the battles we fight are on the inside.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.Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is a habit.Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.
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.Socrates
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.Socrates
Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.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.Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.Let him who would move the world first move himself.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.True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance. We are even comfortable with that ignorance, because it is all we know. When we first start facing truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives. But if you continue to seek truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better. In fact, you want more! It's true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don't care. Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant.Socrates
No one can teach, if by teaching we mean the transmission of knowledge, in any mechanical fashion, from one person to another. The most that can be done is that one person who is more knowledgeable than another can, by asking a series of questions, stimulate the other to think, and so cause him to learn for himself.Socrates
Be as you wish to seem.He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.Envy is the ulcer of the soul.Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.In every person there is a sun. Just let them shine.The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.If you want to be wrong then follow the masses.When you want success as badly as you want the air, then you will get it. There is no other secret of success.Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.Every action has its pleasures and its price.Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world.Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.I don't care what people say about me. I do care about my mistakes.We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.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.Those who are hardest to love need it the most.The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles.I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.
Obligation sends the children to bed on time, but love tucks the covers in around their necks and passes out kisses and hugs. Yesterday is about experience; tomorrow is about hope; today is about transitioning from one to the other. The happiest people on earth don't have the best of everything... they make the best of everything I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.Socrates
The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone knew everything and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for girls, they are forward, immodest and unwomanly in speech, behaviour and dress.Socrates
Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?True perfection is a bold quest to seek. Only the willing and true of heart will seek the betterment of many.Understanding a question is half an answer.The hottest love has the coldest end.The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be, all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend.Better to do a little well, then a great deal badly.The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.Lies are the greatest murder. They kill the Truth.When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.Smart people learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences, stupid people already have all the answers.Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.The years wrinkle our skin, but lack of enthusiasm wrinkles our soul.Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.My friend… care for your psyche… know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves.
Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of – for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.Socrates
If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.Socrates
It is better to suffer an injustice than to commit one.If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.Life is full of questions. Idiots are full of answers.I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.To believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of ignorance and folly.The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.The value of a man is measured in the number of those who stand beside him, not those who follow.Nobody knows what death is, nor whether to man it is perchance the greatest of blessings, yet people fear it as if they surely knew it to be the worse of evils.Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.Call no man unhappy until he is married.The cure of many diseases remains unknown to the physicians of Hellos (Greece) because they do not study the whole person.People learn more on their own rather than being force fed.Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary?Do it because it’s in your heart. Not because you want something in return. Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they’re fools, and fools who think they are wise.This is a universe that does not favor the timid.Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.There are two kinds of disease of the soul, vice and ignorance.Real wisdom is the property of God, and… human wisdom has little or no value.Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.Trust not a woman when she weeps, for it is her nature to weep when she wants her will.I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
