Quotes About Socrates

If Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ died like a God.

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

The wise are doubtful,' Socrates returned, 'and I should not be singular if I too doubted.

Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, Socrates considered the government to be an aristocracy.

Human reasoning, she said—referring now explicitly to Socrates and Plato—human reasoning is imperfect. Human bias keeps us from perfect vision of what is happening around us. But the quest for truth—the quest to understand the world around us—must ultimately be how you enact the good.

The Ancients subjected themselves to a fierce discipline of detachment from public opinion. Although they inevitably had to try to influence political life in their favor, they never seriously thought of themselves as founders or lawgivers. The mixture of unwise power and powerless wisdom, in the ancients view, would always end up with power strengthened and wisdom compromised. He who flirts with power, Socrates said, will be compelled to lie with it.

Thrasymachus sees that Socrates does not respect the city. He sees the truth about Socrates, but he cannot, at least in the beginning, appreciate him. The others appreciate him, but partly because they are blind to what is most important to him.

In order to know such an amorphous being as man, Rousseau himself and his particular history are, in his view, more important than is Socrates quest for man in general or man in himself.

Socrates too thought that living according to the opinions of others was an illness. But he did not urge men to look for a source for producing their own unique opinions, or criticize them for being conformists. His measure of health was not sincerity, authenticity or any of the other necessarily vague criteria for distinguishing a healthy self. The truth is the one thing most needful; and conforming to nature is quite different from conforming to law, convention or opinion.

In the new order a Locke was freewith almost no danger of being interfered withto think his sublime thoughts, to seek the first causes of all things, to understand the nature of things. He could talk with his friends and teach the young. And there was money enough. The academies and universities satisfied Socrates demand to be fed in the prytaneum.

I think Socrates was fascinated by Alcibiades. It's almost the opposite of hypocrisy. I think it's like when you can see the potential in someone.

In general, I agree with Socrates that what democracies badly need is the examined life, and we need to think critically about ourselves.

In that prehistoric time, before the Internet, before information floated in the ozone, I was a soccer novice who had never heard of Socrates until somebody pointed him out - swarthy, shaggy, tall, slender, mysterious.

In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. —Socrates (469–399 BCE)

Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.

Socrates gave no diplomas or degrees, and would have subjected any disciple who demanded one to a disconcerting catechism on the nature of true knowledge.

Socrates affirmed that only that which the reader already knows can be sparked by a reading, and that the knowledge cannot be acquired through dead letters.

Socrates had a student named Plato, Plato had a student named Aristotle, and Aristotle had a student named Alexander the Great.

In the Western tradition, we have focused on teaching as a skill and forgotten what Socrates knew: teaching is a gift, learning is a skill.

Socrates counts among those great minds who actually cultivated doubt in the name of truth.

Death is not dreadful or else it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates.

The man has to learn 'what each specific thing means', as Socrates often said, and stop casually applying preconceptions to individual cases. This is the cause of everyone's troubles, the inability to apply common preconceptions to particulars. Instead the opinions of men as to what is bad diverge.

It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word - on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.

At a feast, do not give a speech about how everyone should eat. Only eat as you should. Socrates never made a spectacle of himself or put on an air of authority. In philosophical conversations, follow his example—stay mostly silent; ask questions and listen intently. If anyone calls you ignorant and says you know nothing, be sure that you are now a true student of philosophy.