Top 440 Quotes & Sayings by Socrates - Page 3

There is but one evil, ignorance.

The perfect human being is all human beings put together, it is a collective, it is all of us together that make perfection.

To harm another is to harm oneself

All wars are fought for the acquisition of wealth

All thinking begins with wondering

There is no illness of the body except for the mind

You never know a line is crooked unless you have a straight one to put next to it.

Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?

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

An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition and the perpetual tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver which consumeth the flesh and drieth up the marrow of the bones.

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?

Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.

Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth

Admitting one's ignorance is the first step in acquiring knowledge.

You don't know what you don't know.

I have not sought during my life to amass wealth and to adorn my body, but I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience, and above all with a love of liberty.

The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion.

Man must rise above the Earth - to the top of the atmosphere and beyond - for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.

The man who is truly wise knows that he knows very little.

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

Is it not, then, better to be ridiculous and friendly than clever and hostile?

The real danger in life is not death, but living an evil life.

Happiness is unrepented pleasure.

The body cannot be cured without regard for the soul.

Let us follow the truth whither so ever it leads.

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

Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods.

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

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

It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself.

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

Wisdom is knowing what you don't know.

Contentment is natural wealth.

To need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer does he approach to divinity.

The soul, like the body, accepts by practice whatever habit one wishes it to contact.

The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.

Be true to thine own self.

Go wherever the facts lead.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued." "It is not living that matters, but living rightly. The unexamined life is not worth living.

Virtue is the beauty of the soul.

If he who does not know kept silent, discord would cease.

Since all of us desire to be happy, and since we evidently become so on account of our use—that is our good use—of other things, and since knowledge is what provides this goodness of use and also good fortune, every man must, as seems plausible, prepare himself by every means for this: to be as wise as possible. Right?

The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.

In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.

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.

The cure of many diseases remains unknown to the physicians of Hellos (Greece) because they do not study the whole person.

When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.

Besides, it is a shame to let yourself grow old through neglect before seeing how you can develop the maximum beauty and strength of body; and you can have this experience if your are negligent, because these things don't normally happen by themselves.

There is no greater magnificence than to defeat oneself. That is the magnificence.

...in the acquisition of this blessing human nature can find no better helper than Love. I declare that it is the duty of every man to honour Love, and I honour and practice the mysteries of Love in an especial degree myself, and recommend the same to others, and I praise the power and valour of Love to the best of my ability both now and always.

It is not difficult to avoid death. It is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.

The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

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.

Envy is the ulcer of the soul.

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.

The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form.

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