Socrates – 28 Quotes

28 Quotes by Socrates

Be slow to fall into friendship but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

– Socrates

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

– Socrates

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

– Socrates

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

– Socrates

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

– Socrates

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

– Socrates

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

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

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

– Socrates

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

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

– Socrates

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy if not, you’ll become a philosopher.

– Socrates

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

– Socrates

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

– Socrates

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

– Socrates

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

– Socrates

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

– Socrates

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

– Socrates

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

– Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.

– Socrates

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

– Socrates

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

– Socrates

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

– Socrates

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

– Socrates

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

– Socrates

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.

– Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

– Socrates

Wisdom begins in wonder.

– Socrates