Quotes from Socrates

Thiu shouldst eat to live not live to eat

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. 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.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.

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.

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

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

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." [As quoted in Plutarch's Of Banishment ]

Every action has its pleasures and its price.

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

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

understanding a question is half an answer