The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates is considered one of the most influential thinkers in history. His teachings have been studied for centuries, and his quotes remain some of the most powerful and inspiring words ever spoken.
Socrates believed that knowledge was power, and he used his wit to guide others towards a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. He famously said “the unexamined life is not worth living”, emphasizing the importance of self-reflection as a necessary part of life. His teachings focused on ethics, politics, and virtue, exploring topics such as morality, justice, truthfulness and integrity.
Socrates Quotes
All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.
Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.
Let him that would move the world first move himself.
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.
Socrates Quotes on Change
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
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.
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.
No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.
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.
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 Quotes On Life & Love
Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
Beauty is a short lived tyranny.
A system of morality that is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception that has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
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.
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.
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.
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
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.
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.
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
Short Socrates Quotes
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
He is the richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
How many are the things I can do without!
Wisdom begins in wonder.
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.
I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
An honest man is always a child.
Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of.
The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.
Call no man unhappy until he is married.
The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.
Famous Socrates Quotes On Education, Democracy & Death
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
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.
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
He is a man of courage who does not run away but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
Nothing is to be preferred before justice.
An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.
I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
Happiness is an unrepentant pleasure.
The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.
I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
The poets are only interpreters of the gods.
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.
Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
Powerful Socrates quotes
Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.
The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.
The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.
Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.
When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to the right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion and is called love.
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?
Conclusion
In conclusion, Socrates is a figure that was important to philosophy.
He helped shape the way people think today. His quotes are timeless because they get people to think about how to live an ethical life. Socrates’ quotes get people past the surface and get them thinking about what the deeper meaning of life is.
