Which are your favorite Socrates quotes?
Socrates was a Greek philosopher and one of the major founders of Western philosophy;
He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes.
We’ve put together this incredible collection of 65 awesome Socrates quotes:
65 Socrates Quotes
1. “A multitude of books distracts the mind.” – Socrates
2. “An unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates
3. “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher… and that is a good thing for any man.” – Socrates
4. “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” – Socrates
5. “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” – Socrates
6. “Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.” – Socrates
7. “Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.” – Socrates
8. “How many are the things I can do without!” – Socrates
9. “I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.” – Socrates
10th of 65 Socrates Quotes
10. “I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.” – Socrates
11. “In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.” – Socrates
12. “Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.” – Socrates
13. “Nothing is to be preferred before justice.” – Socrates
14. “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
15. “See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.” – Socrates
16. “The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.” – Socrates
17. “The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.” – Socrates
18. “The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.” – Socrates
19. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates
20th of 65 Socrates Quotes
20. “They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.” – Socrates
21. “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” – Socrates
22. “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
23. “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
24. “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.” – Socrates
25. “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
26. “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? Famous last words” – Socrates
27. “Enjoy yourself — it’s later than you think.” – Socrates
28. “From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.” – Socrates
29. “He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.” – Socrates
30th of 65 Socrates Quotes
30. “I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” – Socrates
31. “I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.” – Socrates
32. “If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.” – Socrates
33. “Know thyself Self-knowledge.” – Socrates
34. “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.” – Socrates
35. “Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.” – Socrates
36. “Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.” – Socrates
37. “Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.” – Socrates
38. “The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.” – Socrates
39. “The hottest love has the coldest end.” – Socrates
40th of 65 Socrates Quotes
40. “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.” – Socrates
41. “The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.” – Socrates
42. “Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.” – Socrates
43. “What a lot of things there are a man can do without.” – Socrates
44. “Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.” – Socrates
45. “An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.” – Socrates
46. “Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.” – Socrates
47. “Call no man unhappy until he is married.” – Socrates
48. “Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.” – Socrates
49. “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.” – Socrates
50th of 65 Socrates Quotes
50. “Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.” – Socrates
51. “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” – Socrates
52. “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” – Socrates
53. “I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.” – Socrates
54. “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
55. “Let him that would move the world, first move himself.” – Socrates
56. “No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.” – Socrates
57. “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” – Socrates
58. “Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.” – Socrates
59. “The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.” – Socrates
60th of 65 Socrates Quotes
60. “The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.” – Socrates
61. “The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.” – Socrates
62. “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates
63. “There is only one good — knowledge; and only one evil — ignorance.” – Socrates
64. “To find yourself, think for yourself.” – Socrates
65. “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.” – Socrates
Summary
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