Quotes from Socrates

The man who is truly wise knows that he knows very little.

When you propose ridiculous things to believe, too many men will choose to believe nothing at all.

The greatest of all mysteries is the man himself.

Wealth does not bring about excellence (aka areté), but excellence (aka areté) brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.

Beloved Pan and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and the inward man be one.

Creation is man's immortality and brings him nearest to the gods.

Neither I nor any other man should, on trial or in way, contrive to avoid death at any cost.

Living or dead, to a good man there can come no evil.

One cannot come closer to the gods than by bringing health to his Fellow Man.

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

How many things I can do without!

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

I have not sought during my life to amass wealth and to adorn my body, but I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience, and above all with a love of liberty.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

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.

This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.

If I had engaged in politics, O men of Athens, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself.

Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problems of wheat.

Better to do a little well, then a great deal badly.

But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living; which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God.