Quotes About Socrates

The wisdom Socrates had brought to the Greeks, Clement asserted, Jesus had brought to the Jews and other barbarians. In fact, Socrates and Jesus were spiritual brothers. Just as Plato and Aristotle founded schools to teach disciples, so now Christ was the new "schoolmaster" of the human race.

For example, Socrates explains that the dissolute freedom of democracies like that of Athens, "which treats all men as equals whether they are equal or not," must lead inevitably to moral corruption, civic disorder, and mob rule.

The example of Saint Socrates, as Erasmus once called him, would gently lead everyone to see that the soul's highest goal is wisdom and that the "philosophy of Christ" (philosophia Christi) is the highest form of wisdom there is.

The God that Socrates presented to his disciples stood above and beyond the familiar myths and rituals. Socrates's God shares the same transcendent immortality as the soul and lies beyond all material space and time. He dwells naturally in the same afterlife as the Forms:

The classic deductive inference (actually taken from Aristotle's Categories) is "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal." Usually a good deductive inference goes from greater generalities to lesser ones:

Socrates could do this because he starts with a different question from "What is real?" (although eventually he gets there, too). Socrates was the first also to ask: "What am I?

Boethius was deeply aware of the practical, humanistic side of Plato's thought in dialogues like the Republic, the Gorgias, and the Crito. He embraced Plato's belief that men need wisdom in order to confront and deal with evil in this world, as well as to prepare for the next. The proof is the reverence with which he invokes the name of Socrates.

From the point of view of Plato—not to mention Socrates—this was a shocking downgrading of reason. But Bernard was only following Plato's hierarchy of knowledge as adopted and adapted by Saint Augustine. Just as reason is superior to opinion (doxa), so Saint Augustine taught that faith is superior to reason because it rests on the highest wisdom of all, the truth of God's revelation.9 Faith of this potent kind is more than belief.

Thanks to Plato, Socrates's notion of the individual rational soul would become an integral part of Western thinking for the next two thousand years.

In the most intellectual city of the ancient world, in its most intellectual age, Socrates, its most intellectual inhabitant, discouraged the study of physics because they engendered uncertainty, and did not augment human happiness. The kind of knowledge which is most connected with human progress now was that least connected with it then.

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.

Los griegos han tenido eticidad; pero Sócrates se propuso enseñarles las virtudes, los deberes, etc., morales, que tiene el hombre. El hombre moral no es el que quiere y hace lo justo; no es el hombre inocente, sino el que tiene conciencia de su acción.

Todos los atenienses estaban iniciados en los misterios eleusinos; solo Sócrates no lo estaba, porque quería conservar las manos libres para que, si fundaba algo en el pensamiento, no le acusasen de haberlo sabido por los misterios eleusinos. Sócrates sabía que la ciencia y el arte no brotan de los misterios y que la sabiduría jamás se halla en el secreto. Antes bien, la verdadera ciencia está en el campo abierto de la conciencia.

Socrates was famously executed for his philosophical and political beliefs. I wondered what would happen if you had a similar character, who was so relentlessly questioning of everything? In a modern society, would we be any more or any less tolerant of that kind of character?

Of all parts of wisdom, the practice is the best. Socrates was esteemed the wisest man of his time because he turned his acquired knowledge into morality, and aimed at goodness more than greatness.

And nevertheless I have loved certain of my masters, and those strangely intimate though elusive relations existing between student and teacher, and the Sirens singing somewhere within the cracked voice of him who is first to reveal a new idea. The greatest seducer was not Alcibiades, afterall, it was Socrates.

STREPSIADES. So the rear of a gnat is a trumpet. Oh! what a splendid discovery! Thrice happy Socrates! 'Twould not be difficult to succeed in a law-suit, knowing so much about the gut of a gnat!

SOCRATES. Silence, old man, give heed to the prayers.... Oh! most mighty king, the boundless air, that keepest the earth suspended in space, thou bright Aether and ye venerable goddesses, the Clouds, who carry in your loins the thunder and the lightning, arise, ye sovereign powers and manifest yourselves in the celestial spheres to the eyes of the sage.

Strep. Tell me, O Socrates, I beseech you, by Jupiter, who are these that have uttered this grand song? Are they some heroines? Soc. By no means; but heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ability to hoax, and comprehension

In the next place, Experience and Skill in the various particulars is thought to be a species of Courage: whence Socrates also thought that Courage was knowledge.

The sea was the true center of the Greek world: "we live round the sea," says Plato's Socrates, "like frogs . . . around a pond.

Socrates…Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'dWisest of men.

É melhor ser Sócrates insatisfeito do que um porco satisfeito; é melhor ser Sócrates insatisfeito que um imbecil satisfeito. E, se o imbecil ou o porco são de opinião diferente, é que só conhecem um lado da questão: o deles. A outra parte, para fazer a comparação, conhece os dois lados.

Is it any wonder that Socrates was outraged at the accusation he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, that of pre-empting the teaching function, which, in a healthy community, belongs to everyone.