Timeless Wisdom: A Curated Collection of Inspirational Quotes by Socrates

"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us."

- Socrates

"I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing."

- Socrates

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing."

- Socrates

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

- Socrates

"I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance."

- Socrates

"True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing."

- Socrates

"To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge."

- Socrates

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

- Socrates

"Wisdom begins in wonder."

- Socrates

"I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think."

- Socrates

"The mind is everything; what you think you become."

- Socrates

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."

- 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

"To find yourself, think for yourself."

- Socrates

"Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual."

- Socrates

"An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all."

- Socrates

"Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it."

- Socrates

"Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults."

- Socrates

"What screws us up the most in life is the picture in our heads of what it’s supposed to be."

- Socrates

"It is not living that matters, but living rightly."

- Socrates

"The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms."

- Socrates

"In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent."

- 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

"Nothing is to be preferred before justice."

- Socrates

"I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world."

- Socrates

"Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle."

- Socrates

"The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves."

- Socrates

"It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one."

- Socrates

"To move the world, we must first move ourselves."

- Socrates

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new."

- Socrates

"Smart people learn from everything and everyone. Average people from their experiences. Stupid people already have all the answers."

- Socrates

"The value of a man is measured in the number of those who stand beside him, not those who follow."

- Socrates

"To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous."

- Socrates

"I call myself a peaceful warrior because the battles we fight are on the inside."

- Socrates

"Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are."

- Socrates

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life."

- Socrates

"The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be."

- Socrates

"The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear."

- Socrates

"Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued."

- Socrates

"Let him that would move the world first move himself."

- Socrates

"Be as you wish to seem."

- 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

"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

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."

- Socrates

"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for."

- Socrates

"He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature."

- 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

"From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate."

- Socrates

"Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant."

- Socrates

"The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor."

- Socrates

"Better to do a little well, then a great deal badly."

- 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

"We can do nothing without the body, let us always take care that it is in the best condition to sustain us."

- 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

"Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior."

- Socrates

"He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy."

- 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

"An honest man is always a child."

- Socrates

"No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods."

- Socrates

"Death may be the greatest of all human blessings."

- 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

"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

"Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live."

- Socrates

"All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine."

- Socrates

"The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him."

- Socrates

"If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it."

- Socrates

"As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent."

- Socrates

"Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us."

- 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

"I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live."

- Socrates

"Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind."

- Socrates

"Beauty is a short-lived tyranny."

- Socrates

"Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat."

- Unknown