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.
SOCRATESMy plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.
More Socrates Quotes
-
-
The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
SOCRATES -
The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.
SOCRATES -
There is no solution; seek it lovingly.
SOCRATES -
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.
SOCRATES -
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
SOCRATES -
Let him who would move the world first move himself.
SOCRATES -
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.
SOCRATES -
No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.
SOCRATES -
To be is to do.
SOCRATES -
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
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 know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
SOCRATES -
Be as you wish to seem.
SOCRATES -
If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.
SOCRATES -
The answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am.
SOCRATES -
No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.
SOCRATES -
In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.
SOCRATES -
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
SOCRATES -
Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
SOCRATES -
Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.
SOCRATES -
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
SOCRATES -
Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.
SOCRATES -
Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.
SOCRATES -
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
SOCRATES -
God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.
SOCRATES -
To express oneself badly is not only faulty as far as the language goes, but does some harm to the soul.
SOCRATES