Socrates
Greek philosopher, 470-399 BC
25 quotes.
Quotes by Socrates
- As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
- Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.
- Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.
- Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.
- Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
- He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who might be better employed.
- He is the richest who is content with the least.
- How can you call a man free when his pleasures rule over him?
- It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
- Let him that would move the world, first move himself.
- Listen not to a tale-bearer or slanderer, for he tells thee nothing out of good-will; but as he discovereth of the secrets of others, so he will of thine in turn.
- Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.
- The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.
- The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
- The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.
- The surest, as the shortest way, to make yourself beloved and honored, is to be, indeed, the very man you wish to appear.
- The unexamined life is not worth living.
- The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
- There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend.
- They who provide much wealth for their children but neglect to improve them in virtue, do like those who feed their horses high, but never train them to be useful.
- Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
- To move the world we must move ourselves.
- We cannot live better than in seeking to become better, nor more agreeably than in having a clear conscience.
- We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.
- Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.