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Socrates Quotes
“Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”
“Be as you wish to seem.”
“He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.”
“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”
“Wisdom begins in wonder.”
“No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.”
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.”
“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”
“Let him that would move the world first move himself.”
“Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.”
“Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.”
“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.”
“An honest man is always a child.”
“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”
“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.”
“I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.”
“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.”
“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.”
“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.”
“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.”
“The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.”
“It is not living that matters, but living rightly.”
“As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.”
“The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.”
“Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.”
“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.”
“I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.”
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
“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.”
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.”
“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”
“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”
“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
“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.”
“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.”
“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”
“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”
“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”