Quotes By 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.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

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

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

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

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

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

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

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

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.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

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

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

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

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.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

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