These Socrates quotes and sayings about love and life will help you to know yourself better.
Socrates born in 470 BC was a Greek philosopher. He was the founder of Western philosophy and the first moral philosopher. He is a mysterious figure who has left none of the writing. Most of his teaching and wisdom were shared by his students Plato and Xenophon.
Socrates was accused of corrupting the young in 339 BC and because he did not conform to the local traditions, many people believed that his teaching was life-threatening. He was sentenced to death, spent his last day at prison refusing to escape and died after being forced to drink poison hemlock.
Here are sharing a collection of the great philosopher, Socrates’ quotes and sayings about love, life to share wisdom.
Socrates Quotes
“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
“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
― Socrates
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
― Socrates
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
― Socrates
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Socrates
“Every action has its pleasures and its price.”
― Socrates
“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
― Socrates
Socrates Famous Quotes
“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
― Socrates
“understanding a question is half an answer”
― 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
“Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.”
― Socrates
“The hottest love has the coldest end.”
― Socrates
“Envy is the ulcer of the soul.”
― Socrates
“Be as you wish to seem.”
― Socrates
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
― Socrates
“I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.”
― Socrates
Socrates Quotes About Life
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
― Socrates
“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
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
― Socrates
“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.”
― Socrates
“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.”
― Socrates
“All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.”
― Socrates
“The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.”
― 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. 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.”
― Socrates
“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
― Socrates
“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
Socrates Quotes On Love
“The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others but to be improving yourselves. ”
― Socrates
“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”
― Socrates
“In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.”
― Socrates
“I only know that I know nothing”
― Socrates
“We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.”
― Socrates
“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”
― Socrates
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”
― Socrates
“Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle.”
― Socrates
“If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.”
― Socrates
“My friend…care for your psyche…know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves.”
― Socrates
Socrates Democracy Quotes
“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
“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
― 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 happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
― Socrates
“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
― Socrates
“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”
― Socrates
“I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.”
― Socrates
“When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.”
― Socrates
“It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.”
― Socrates
“Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.”
― Socrates
Socrates Best Sayings
“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
― Socrates
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
― Socrates
“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
“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.”
― Socrates
“The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion.”
― Socrates
“To be is to do”
― Socrates
“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.”
― 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
“Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.”
― Socrates
“There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.”
― Socrates
Socrates Quotes About Self
“Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful & good, I am better off than he is- for he knows nothing & thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.”
― Socrates
“I did not care for the things that most people care about– making money, having a comfortable home, high military or civil rank, and all the other activities, political appointments, secret societies, party organizations, which go on in our city . . . I set myself to do you– each one of you, individually and in private– what I hold to be the greatest possible service. I tried to persuade each one of you to concern himself less with what he has than with what he is, so as to render himself as excellent and as rational as possible.”
― Socrates
“An unconsidered life is not one worth living.”
― Socrates
“I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can… And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same… I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.”
― Socrates
“The mind is everything; what you think you become”
― Socrates, The Psychology of Fate & of Free Will
“Virtue does not come from wealth, but. . . wealth, and every other good thing which men have. . . comes from virtue.”
― Socrates
“To express oneself badly is not only faulty as far as the language goes, but does some harm to the soul.”
― Socrates
“My plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.”
― Socrates, Apology
“Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and everyone; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.”
― Socrates
“Do not trouble about those who practice philosophy, whether they are good or bad; but examine the thing itself well and carefully. And if philosophy appears a bad thing to you, turn every man from it, not only your sons; but if it appears to you such as I think it to be, take courage, pursue it, and practice it, as the saying is, ‘both you and your house.”
― Socrates
Socrates Quotes On Change
“The ancient Oracle said that I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.”
― Socrates
“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny”
― Socrates
“May the inward and outward man be as one.”
― Socrates
“Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity or undue depression in adversity.”
― Socrates
“For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one know whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows that he does not know? And in this respect only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be wiser than they are: that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know…”
― Socrates
“I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them.”
― Socrates, Apology
“God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods…”
― Socrates
“Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they’re fools, and fools who think they are wise.”
― Socrates
“I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man…”
― Socrates
“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”
― Socrates
Did you get to know yourself a bit more with these Socrates quotes?
Socrates was undoubtedly one of the greatest philosophers of his time. He had inspired many people and students includign Plato. He believed that for being a great leader, they should have the knowledge and absolute understanding of themselves.
We hope these Socrates quotes and sayings on love, life and knowing yourself will provide you the wisdom you are seeking for.
Do share your thoughts with us in the comment section and tell us which one was your favorite Socrates quotes or if you want to ask any questions or have any query send them via Contact Us
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