53 Best Of Socrates Quotes – Don’t Miss #12

Socrates was a greek philosopher who was renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics. An amazing collection of his quotes will help you understand yourself better.

You may also like our best Oscar Wilde quotes collection.

Here is the list of selected top quotes by Socrates

1. “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
2. “The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.”
3. “What a lot of things there are a man can do without.”
4. “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”
5. “Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.”
6. “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.”
7. “Know thyself.”
8. “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
9. “If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.”
10. “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.”
11. “They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.”
12. “Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.”
13. “I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for harming; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.”
14. “How many are the things I can do without!”
15. “I was too honest a man to be a politician and live.”
16. “Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.”
17. “See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.”
18. “A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.”
19. “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.”
20. “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.”
21. “In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.”
22. “The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.”
23. “Let him that would move the world, the first move.”
24. “The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.”
25. “I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”
26. “Call no man unhappy until he is married.”
27. “Happiness is an unrepentant pleasure.”
28. “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”
29. “The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.”
30. “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
31. “Once made equal to man, a woman becomes his superior.”
32. “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?”
33. “Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.”
34. “The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.”
35. “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
36. “The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.”
37. “Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.”
38. “Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.”
39. “He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.”
40. “Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.”
41. “Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”
42. “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
43. “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
44. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
45. “Every action has its pleasures and its price.”
46. “Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of.”
47. “Be as you wish to seem.”
48. “Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
49. “Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”
50. “I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.”
51. “Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?”
52. “Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity or undue depression in adversity.”
53. “We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.”

Conclusion

According to Greek historian Xenoplon Socrates’s commitment to ethics was evident in his emphasis on the importance of virtuous living for the greater well-being of society. He was regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the ancient era and is credited as one founders of western philosophy. See more from goodreads.