wonderful quotes by the famous greek philosopher socrates
Wonderful Quotes By the Famous Greek Philosopher Socrates
Socrates was a renowned Greek philosopher who gifted the world with gems of wisdom. In this Buzzle article, we present some famous quotes on love, marriage, life, education, teaching, and wisdom, by him.
"Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty."
Socrates was a famous Greek philosopher. He lived approximately between 470 BCE to 399 BCE in Athens. He was a renowned philosopher who had a profound impact on ancient and modern philosophy. Although well-known for his thoughts, views, ideas, and opinions, he was surrounded by controversies for the arguments posed by him. He never wrote anything, but his thoughts are recorded in a conversational style by his followers, and admirers like Plato and Xenophon.
The following sections list a collection of the most famous quotes by the man himself - Socrates.
―Socrates
Socrates' Quotes on Love and Friendship
By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.
The hottest love has the coldest end.
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
Socrates' Quotes on Life
It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
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 way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
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.
An honest man is always a child.
He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.
Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
Socrates' Quotes on Happiness
The secret of happiness is not found in seeking more but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
Socrates' Quotes on Learning
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
The only true wisdom is to know that you know nothing.
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.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.
Be as you wish to seem.
To move the world we must first move ourselves.
Wisdom begins in wonder.
I cannot teach anybody anything I can only make them think.
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Know Thyself.
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Be as you wish to seem.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
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.
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.
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.
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 of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
Every action has its pleasures and its price.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
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' Quotes on Death
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?
The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.
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.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
Socrates' Quotes on God
Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
Let him that would move the world first move himself.
All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.