Top 440 Quotes & Sayings by Socrates

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Greek philosopher Socrates.

Last updated on November 25, 2024.

Socrates was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing offers to help him escape.

Greek - Philosopher | 469 BC - 399 BC

Source: Wikipedia

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Socrates

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

Socrates

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

Socrates

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Socrates

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

Socrates

Be as you wish to seem.

Socrates

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

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.

Socrates

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.

Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Socrates

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

Socrates

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

Socrates

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.

Socrates

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

Socrates

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Socrates

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Socrates

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Socrates

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

Socrates

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

Socrates

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

Socrates

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

Socrates

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates

An honest man is always a child.

Socrates

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

Socrates

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

Socrates

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

Socrates

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

Socrates

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

Socrates

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

Socrates

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Socrates

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Socrates

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

Socrates

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Socrates

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

Socrates

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

Socrates

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Socrates

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

Socrates

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Socrates

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Socrates

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Socrates

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

Socrates

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

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

If you want to be wrong then follow the masses.

Socrates

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

Socrates

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is a habit.

Socrates

When you want success as badly as you want the air, then you will get it. There is no other secret of success.

Socrates

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

Socrates

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

Every action has its pleasures and its price.

Socrates

Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

Socrates

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.

Socrates

Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen.

Socrates

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