Socrates Quotes

By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utter...

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

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

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

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.

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

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

Be as you wish to seem.

For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to t...

When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.

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

I only know that I know nothing

Do not trouble about those who practice philosophy, whether they are good or bad; but examine the thing itself well and carefully. And if philosophy appears a bad thing to you, turn every man from it,...

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.

You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before because of the joy they hav...

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.