Quotes from Socrates

I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.

I have lived long enough to learn how much there is I can really do without.... He is nearest to God who needs the fewest things.

In my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable.

To give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god .

God desired to be the real maker of a real bed, not a particular maker of a particular bed, and therefore He created a bed which is essentially and by nature one only.

It seems that God took away the minds of poets that they might better express His.

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

I prefer to be refuted than to refute, for it is a greater good for oneself to be freed from the greatest evil than to free another.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

By all implies marry if you get a great wife/husband, you are going to be pleased. If you get a bad a single, you are going to become a philosopher.

Contentment is natural wealth.

Happiness is unrepented pleasure.

Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.

The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.

I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world.

I know one thing, that I know nothing.

It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.

A man who preserves his integrity no real, long-lasting harm can ever come.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

The greater the power that deigns to serve you, the more honor it demands of you.

He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.

I have good hope that there is something remaining for the dead.

I am not an Athenian nor a Greek but a citizen of the world.

To find yourself, think for yourself.