200+ Socrates Quotes – That’s Offer A More Peaceful Life
The old Greek thinker Socrates gave us a lot of brilliant advice to help us live a calm and happy life.
This article delves into the Most Popular Socrates Quotes, uncovering their timeless relevance and how they can bring tranquility to our modern lives.
Socrates’ quotes touch upon themes of self-examination, wisdom, and virtue. They offer guidance on navigating life’s complexities, making wiser decisions, and finding inner peace. Whether you seek serenity in a chaotic world, seek personal growth, or yearn for a more peaceful existence, Socrates’ quotes provide a valuable roadmap.
Join us as we explore the Quotes by Socrates that Offer a More Peaceful Life and discover how his ancient philosophy can help you lead a life marked by tranquility, self-awareness, and profound wisdom. Socrates’ teachings continue to resonate across centuries, offering a timeless source of inspiration for those seeking a peaceful and meaningful life.
Most Popular Socrates Quotes
Understanding a question is half an answer. – Socrates
Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people. – Socrates
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. – Socrates
The unexamined life is not worth living. — 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.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. – Socrates
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom. – Socrates
Beware the barrenness of a busy life. – Socrates
To fear death, my friends is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything… – Socrates
One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing. – 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
Be of good hope in the face of death. Believe in this one truth for certain, that no evil can befall a good man either in life or death, and that his fate is not a matter of indifference to the gods. —Socrates
It is not living that matters, but living rightly. – Socrates
I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing. – Socrates
An unexamined life is not worth living. – Socrates
True knowledge exists in knowing that you 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 would choose…that the whole world should be at odds with me, and oppose me, rather than that I myself should be at odds with myself, and contradict myself. –Socrates
To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. – Socrates
Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen. – Socrates
Nothing is so well learned as that which is discovered. – Socrates
A multitude of books distracts the mind. – Socrates
Know thyself.- Socrates
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. – 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
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel. ― Socrates
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think ― 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.
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live. ― Socrates
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature. – Socrates
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us. ― Socrates
Smart people learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences, stupid people already have all their answers. ― Socrates
Wisdom begins in wonder. – Socrates
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is a habit. — SOCRATES
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed. – Socrates
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.” – Socrates
To find yourself, think for yourself. – Socrates
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. – Socrates
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? – 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
Let him that would move the world first move him self. – Socrates
The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods. — Socrates
All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine. –Socrates
Be as you wish to seem. – Socrates
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. – Socrates
When the debate is over, slander becomes the tool of the loser. – Socrates
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults. – Socrates
Whoever learns what is good and what is bad will never be swayed by anything to act otherwise as knowledge bids. – Socrates
An honest man is always a child. – Socrates
Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance. We are even comfortable with that ignorance because it is all we know. When we first start facing the truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives. But if you continue to seek the truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better. In fact, you want more! It’s true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don’t care. Once you’ve tasted the truth, you won’t ever want to go back to being ignorant. – Socrates
True perfection is a bold quest to seek. Only the willing and true of heart will seek the betterment of many. – Socrates
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty. – Socrates
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.- Socrates
Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant. – 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
Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down. – 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 charge. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is the law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality. ― Socrates
Well, I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate, it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know. – Socrates
Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us. – Socrates
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it. – Socrates
Let him who would move the world first move him self. . – Socrates
Those who are hardest to love, need it the most. – Socrates
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent. – Socrates
Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of — for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. — 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
Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live. – Socrates
The hottest love has the coldest end. – Socrates
The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less. – Socrates
An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all. – Socrates
When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it. – Socrates
If I tell you that I would be disobeying the god and on that account, it is impossible for me to keep quiet, you won’t be persuaded by me, taking it that I am ionizing. And if I tell you that it is the greatest good for a human being to have discussions every day about virtue and the other things you hear me talking about, examining myself and others and that the unexamined life is not livable for a human being, you will be even less persuaded. — Socrates
Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind. – Socrates
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. – Socrates
We cannot live better than in seeking to become better. – Socrates
I call myself a peaceful warrior because the battles we fight are on the inside. – Socrates
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher. – Socrates
And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and, like the bee, leave my sting in you before I die. – Socrates
From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate. – Socrates
If you want to be wrong then follow the masses. – Socrates
Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle. – Socrates
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds. – Socrates
What screws us up the most in life is the picture in our heads of what it’s supposed to be. – 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
Envy is the ulcer of the soul. – Socrates
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. ― Socrates
The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms. – Socrates
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be. – Socrates
Once made equal to man, a woman becomes his superior. – Socrates.
The mind is everything; what you think you become. – Socrates
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent. – Socrates
Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. – Socrates
Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune. — SOCRATES
How many are the things I can do without! – Socrates
He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.– Socrates
I am convinced that I never wrong anyone intentionally…– Socrates
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. – Socrates
The greatest blessing granted to mankind comes by way of madness, which is a divine gift. – Socrates
Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods. —Socrates
The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him. – Socrates
What a lot of things there are a man can do without. – Socrates
To move the world, we must first move our selves. – Socrates
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued. – Socrates
So violence is not to be expected of those who exercise reason; such conduct belongs to those who have strength without judgment. – Socrates
There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse. – Socrates
Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. – Socrates
There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend.– Socrates
Happiness is unrepentant pleasure. – Socrates
I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others.- Socrates
Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others. – Socrates
Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of. – Socrates
The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves. – 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
Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me. – Socrates
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart. – 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
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.
— 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
One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him. – Socrates
Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. – Socrates
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. – Socrates
The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion. – Socrates
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways I go to die, and you to live. Which is the better, God only knows. —Socrates
Every action has its pleasures and its price. – 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
Life is full of questions. Idiots are full of answers. – 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
That man is best prepared to live who makes everything which concerns his happiness depend upon himself, or nearly so, and does not hang on other men, whereby with their rise and fall his own fortunes also inevitably sway up and down. – Socrates
In every person, there is a sun. Just let them shine. – Socrates
The value of a man is measured in the number of those who stand beside him, not those who follow. – Socrates
Nothing is to be preferred before justice. – Socrates
Everyone wants to tell you what to do and what’s good for you. They don’t want you to find your own answers, they want you to believe theirs.- Socrates
I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within. – Socrates
The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them. – Socrates
My friend…care for your psyche…know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves. – 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
See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all. – Socrates
Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good-naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be… those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes… those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober-minded men. — SOCRATES
Call no man unhappy until he is married. – Socrates
It is better to change an opinion than to persist in the wrong one. – Socrates
I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know. – Socrates
Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body because we are slaves in its service. – Socrates
But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God. – Socrates
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. – Socrates
Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change. – 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
We too must endure and persevere in the inquiry, and then courage will not laugh at our faintheartedness in searching for courage; which after all may, very likely, be endurance. – Socrates
For to fear death is nothing else than to appear wise, without being so; for it is to appear to know what one does not know. For no one knows but that death is the greatest of all good to man; but men fear it, as if they well knew that it is the greatest of evils. — Socrates
When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery.
Enjoy yourself — it’s later than you think. – Socrates
In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. — SOCRATES
Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.– Socrates
Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.― Socrates
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. — SOCRATES
The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor. — SOCRATES
The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods. –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
My method is to call in support of my statements the evidence of a single witness, the man I am arguing with, and to take his vote alone; the rest of the world is nothing to me; I am not talking to them. –Socrates
Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one. – Socrates
You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve. –Socrates
One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him. – Socrates
Virtue does not come from wealth, but. . . wealth, and every other good thing which men have. . . comes from virtue. – Socrates
Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth. – Socrates
She soars on her own wings. –Socrates
Philosophy should be wooed by true men, not bastards. –Socrates
When you want success as badly as you want the air, then you will get it. There is no other secret of success. –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
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. – Socrates
All wars are fought for the acquisition of wealth. – Socrates
Silence is a profound melody, for those who can hear it above all the noise. – Socrates
Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason that set you wandering is ever at your heels. – Socrates
Socrates is charged with corrupting the youth of the city, and with rejecting the gods of Athens and introducing new divinities. – Socrates
Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul? – Socrates
The Delphic oracle said I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing. – Socrates
I am a Citizen of the World, and my Nationality is Goodwill. – Socrates
Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing. – Socrates
Through your rags, I see your vanity. – Socrates
If I save my insight, I don’t attend to the weakness of eyesight. – Socrates
Such as thy words are, such will thine affections be esteemed; and such as thine affections, will be thy deeds; and such as thy deeds will be thy life. – Socrates
Trust not a woman when she weeps, for it is her nature to weep when she wants her will.
Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively. – Socrates
A Life without criticism and status is not worth living. – Socrates
Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. – Socrates
Lies are the greatest murder. They kill the Truth. – Socrates