50 Socrates Quotes to Inspire Your Inner Genius
“If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.”
― Socrates
“God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us. ”
― Socrates
“Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?”
― Socrates
“For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.”
― Socrates
“By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.”
― Socrates
“Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune, nor too sorrowful in misfortune.”
― Socrates
“If I save my insight, I don’t attend to weakness of eyesight.”
― Socrates
“By means of beauty, all beautiful things become beautiful.”
― Socrates
“Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.”
― Socrates
“What a lot of things there are a man can do without.” ― Socrates
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” ― Socrates
“Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.” ― Socrates
“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.” ― Socrates
“Know thyself.” ― Socrates
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” ― Socrates
“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.” ― Socrates
“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.” ― Socrates
“They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.” ― Socrates
“Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.” ― Socrates
“I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.” ― Socrates
“How many are the things I can do without!” ― Socrates
“I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.” ― Socrates
“Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.” ― Socrates
“See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.” ― Socrates
“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.” ― Socrates
“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.” ― Socrates
“When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.” ― Socrates
“I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.” ― Socrates
“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.” ― Socrates
“In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.” ― Socrates
“The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.” ― Socrates
“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.” ― Socrates
“Nothing is to be preferred before justice.” ― Socrates
“Let him that would move the world, first move himself.” ― Socrates
“The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.” ― Socrates
“I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” ― Socrates
“Call no man unhappy until he is married.” ― Socrates
“No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.” ― Socrates
“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.” ― Socrates
“The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.” ― Socrates
“Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.” ― Socrates
“Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.” ― Socrates
“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.” ― Socrates
“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” ― Socrates
“Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.” ― Socrates
“The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.” ― Socrates
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.” ― Socrates
“The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.” ― Socrates
“Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.” ― Socrates
“The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.” ― Socrates
