Socrates Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. 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?

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

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

4. I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

5. I only know that I know nothing

6. Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary? Essential Thinkers - Socrates

7. My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.

8. The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

9. 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.

10. The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.

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

12. The unexamined life is not worth living.

13. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

14. ¿No te parece suficientemente bien dicho que no hay que respetar todas las opiniones de los hombres, sino unas sí y otras no; ni todas las de todos, sino las de uno sí y no las de otros? De ser así, ¿no serán las buenas precisamente las de los sensatos, y las malas las de los insensatos? Apología de Sócrates

15. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

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

20. 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.

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

22. Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they're fools, and fools who think they are wise.

23. My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.

24. Ojalá Critón, que la mayoría fuera capaz de llevar a cabo los mayores males, con tal de que fuera capaz de realizar los mayores bienes, que entonces todo iría bellamente. Mas, por el contrario, de ninguna de las dos cosas son capaces, que no pueden hacer ni lo sensato ni lo insensato, sino tan solo lo que les salga a la ventura Apología de Sócrates

25. Once a man knows good from evil, nothing on earth can compel him to act against that knowledge.

26. Pero no es difícil, varones, huir de la muerte; muy más difícil es huir de la maldad, que corre más veloz que la muerte. Yo ahora, por tardo y por viejo, seguramente, he sido cogido por lo más lento, mientras que mis acusadores, por hábiles y por vivos, han sido cogidos por lo más veloz: por la maldad Apología de Sócrates

27. The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.

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

29. The unexamined life is not worth living.

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