110 Socrates Quotes to challenge your perceptions
Socrates was a Greek philosopher renowned for his contribution in the field of ethics. The name that echoes through the corridors of time and, synonymous to wisdom, inquiry, and philosophy. Here are the best Socrates Quotes to challenge your perceptions and inspire you to think deeply.
Socrates Quotes
- “It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.” – Socrates
- “I call myself a peaceful warrior because the battles we fight are on the inside.” – Socrates
- “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” – Socrates
- “Life is full of questions. Idiots are full of answers.” – Socrates
- “Strong minds play with ideas, weak minds play with people” – Socrates
- “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.” – Socrates
- “My friend… care for your psyche… know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves.” – Socrates
- “The hottest love has the coldest end.” – Socrates
- “Every action has its pleasures and its price.” – Socrates
- “To believe without evidence and demonstration is an act of ignorance and folly.” – Socrates
Socrates Quote
- “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates
- “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” – Socrates
- “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is a habit.” – Socrates
- “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.” – Socrates“
- “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates
- “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” – Socrates
- “Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.” – Socrates
- “Those who are hardest to love need it the most.” – Socrates
- “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” – Socrates
- “True perfection is a bold quest to seek. Only the willing and true of heart will seek the betterment of many.” – Socrates
Philosophy Socrates Quotes
- “The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.” – Socrates
- “If you want to be wrong then follow the masses.” – Socrates
- “Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.” – Socrates
- “Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.” – Socrates
- “From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.” – Socrates
- “He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” – Socrates
- “If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.” – Socrates
- “To move the world, we must first move ourselves.” – Socrates
- “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.” – Socrates
- “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” – Socrates
Timeless Socrates Quotes
- “Smart people learn from everything and everyone. Average people from their experiences. Stupid people already have all the answers.” – Socrates
- “To find yourself, think for yourself.” – Socrates
- “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates
- “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates
- “Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen.” – Socrates
- “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” – Socrates
- “Nothing is so well learned as that which is discovered.” – Socrates
- “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” – Socrates
- “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Socrates
- “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” – Socrates
Famous Socrates Quotes
- “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.” – Socrates
- “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” – Socrates
- “Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.” – Socrates
- “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” – Socrates
- “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” – Socrates
- “Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.” – Socrates
- “It is better to suffer an injustice than to commit one.” – Socrates
- “There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend.” – Socrates
- “If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.” – Socrates
- “In every person there is a sun. Just let them shine.” – Socrates
Quotes by Socrates
- “Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.” – Socrates
- “Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.” – Socrates
- “Envy is the ulcer of the soul.” – Socrates
- “I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.” – Socrates
- “Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.” – Socrates
- “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” – Socrates
- “The value of a man is measured in the number of those who stand beside him, not those who follow.” – Socrates
- “Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.” – 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
- “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” – Socrates
Powerful Socrates Quotes
- “The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles.” – Socrates
- “Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.” – Socrates
- “If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.” – Socrates
- “An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.” – Socrates
- “How many are the things I can do without!” – Socrates
- “Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they’re fools, and fools who think they are wise.” – Socrates
- “Nothing is to be preferred before justice.” – Socrates
- “In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.” – 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
- “Trust not a woman when she weeps, for it is her nature to weep when she wants her will.” – Socrates
Short Socrates Quotes
- “Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.” – Socrates
- “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” – Socrates
- “Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.” – Socrates
- “People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.” – Socrates
- “We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.” – Socrates
- “Real wisdom is the property of God, and… human wisdom has little or no value.” – Socrates
- “In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.” – Socrates
- “There are two kinds of disease of the soul, vice and ignorance.” – Socrates
- “I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.” – Socrates
- “The years wrinkle our skin, but lack of enthusiasm wrinkles our soul.” – Socrates
Best Socrates Quotes
- “Remember, no human condition is ever permanent.” – Socrates
- “One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.” – Socrates
- “Call no man unhappy until he is married.” – Socrates
- “Lies are the greatest murder. They kill the Truth.” – Socrates
- “People learn more on their own rather than being force fed.” – Socrates
- “Do it because it’s in your heart. Not because you want something in return.” – Socrates
- “I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.” – Socrates
- “Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?” – Socrates
- “Understanding a question is half an answer.” – Socrates
- “Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.” – Socrates
Inspiring Socrates Quotes
- “Silence is a profound melody, for those who can hear it above all the noise.” – Socrates
- “Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.” – Socrates
- “I am a fool, but I know I’m a fool and that makes me smarter than you.” – Socrates
- “This is a universe that does not favor the timid.” – Socrates
- “Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.” – Socrates
- “Wisdom begins in wonder.” – Socrates
- “Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.” – Socrates
- “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about” – Socrates
- “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” – Socrates
- “It is not living that matters, but living rightly.” – Socrates
- “Let him who would move the world first move himself.” – Socrates
- “An honest man is always a child.” – Socrates
- “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” – Socrates
- “Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.” – Socrates
- “Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.” – 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
- “The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like him.” – Socrates
- “Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.” – Socrates
- “The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.” – 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
