“Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they’re fools, and fools who think they are wise.”

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.

Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?

To move the world we must move ourselves.

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.

Those who are hardest to love need it the most.

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.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Be as you wish to seem.

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

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

The answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am.

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

I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know why I enjoyed it, and I don’t know why I’ll do it again.

Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.