A Quote by Socrates

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.

Socrates

Quote Topics

Death Does Fear Gentlemen Know Knows Oneself Other Than Think Wise

Quote Author

Socrates
Greek - Philosopher
469 BC - 399 BC

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other then to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.

Plato

To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not. For it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest blessings of human beings. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil.

Socrates

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?

Socrates

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know.

Plato

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.

Roger Ebert

We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it. I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer - for there's something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity - to write, I write; we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing.

Lorrie Moore

Fear is not an emotion, it is a disease. It spreads from the leader to his followers and vice-versa. Nothing has killed more men in war than fear. What should a warrior fear? Death? But death is what everyone achieves ultimately. Is it wounds that you fear? What is more important? A pint of your blood or the nectar of victory? Think. Thinking will clear such doubts.

Anand Neelakantan

He who says, "I know no fear," is no hero. No man knows courage unless he does know fear, and has that in him which is superior to fear, and conquers it.

Lyman Abbott

The wise does not think that only he is right -thus he knows the truth.

Laozi

I do not fear death. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.

Roger Ebert

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

Jean Cocteau

For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

Viktor E. Frankl

The kind of courage that is strengthened or created by concern about what others will think is really a form of fear. Fear of disapproval or dishonor becoming stronger than fear of injury or even death.

Michael Josephson

You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate,' Ellen told her daughter. 'You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen do not like forward girls.