Socrate Quotes

1. "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.Socrates taught us: 'Know thyself!"
Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

2. "A Socrates in every classroom."
Author: Alfred Whitney Griswold

3. "Socrate. Tiens-tu quelque chose ?Strepsiade. Non, par Zeus, non certes.Socrate. Rien du tout ?Strepsiade. Rien... que ma verge dans ma main droite."
Author: Aristophanes

4. "Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as ?a??t?? µe??t?. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise."
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

5. "Imitate Jesus and Socrates"
Author: Benjamin Franklin

6. "What do you take me for? That fool Socrates, who upheld the law at the cost of his own death – just to be ironic? I suspect that act was actually the result of his secret embarrassment of his hideous nose."
Author: Benson Bruno

7. "All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based – or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug – it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault."
Author: Carl Sagan

8. "The ruinous abdication by philosophy of its rightful domain is the consequence of the oblivion of philosophers to a great insight first beheld clearly by Socrates and re-affirmed by Kant as by no other philosopher. Science, concerned solely and exclusively with objective existents, cannot give answers to questions about meanings and values. Only ideas engendered by the mind and to be found nowhere but in the mind (Socrates), only the pure transcendental forms supplied by reason (Kant), can secure the ideals and values and put us in touch with the realities that constitute our moral and spiritual life. Twenty-four centuries after Socrates, two centuries after Kant, we badly need to re-learn the lesson."
Author: D.R. Khashaba

9. "When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: "Try tobear lightly what needs must be." Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness andresignation that touched the hem of divinity."
Author: Dale Carnegie

10. "And where," Socrates smiled, "is the universe?""The universe is well, there are theories about how it's shaped...""That's not what I asked. Where is it?""I don't know - how can I answer that?""That is the point. You cannot answer it, and you never will. There is no knowing about it. You are ignorant of where the universe is, and thus, where you are. In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of What anything is or how is came to be. Life is a mystery."My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass."
Author: Dan Millman

11. "The world's a puzzle; no need to make sense out of it." - Socrates"
Author: Dan Millman

12. "Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.Socrates: How so, Plato?Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is asculptor.Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they haveno need to be reminded.Plato: That is correct.Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders."
Author: E.A. Bucchianeri

13. "While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning how to play a new tune on the flute. "What will be the use of that?" he was asked. "To know this tune before dying." If I dare repeat this reply long since trivialized by the handbooks, it is because it seems to me the sole serious justification of any desire to know, whether exercised on the brink of death or at any other moment of existence."
Author: Emil Cioran

14. "Am întors spatele filozofiei cînd mi-am dat seama ca e cu neputinta sa descopar la Kant vreo slabiciune omeneasca, vreo urma adevarata de tristete; la Kant si la toti filozofii. In raport cu muzica, cu mistica si poezia, activitatea filozofica e hranita de o seva sub¬tiata si de o profunzime suspecta, care nu-i ademe¬neste decît pe oamenii timizi sau caldicei. De altfel, filozofia — neliniste impersonala, refugiu în preajma unor idei anemice — e solutia tuturor celor care fug de exuberanta corupatoare a vietii. Aproape toti filo¬zofii au sfîrsit bine: iata supremul argument îm¬potriva filozofiei. Sfîrsitul lui Socrate însusi nu are în el nimic tragic: e o neîntelegere, sfîrsitul unui pedagog — iar Nietzsche s-a prabusit doar ca poet si vizionar: el si-a ispasit extazele, nu rationamentele."
Author: Emil Cioran

15. "Man represses the irrational passions of destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he worships power, money, the sovereign state, the nation; while he pays lip service to the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed—he has transformed these teachings into a jungle of superstition and idol-worship. How can mankind save itself from destroying itself by this discrepancy between intellectual-technical overmaturity and emotional backwardness?"
Author: Erich Fromm

16. "Tous les chats sont mortels. Socrate est mortel. Donc Socrate est un chat."
Author: Eugène Ionesco

17. "Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions."
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

18. "Reality wasn't a syllogism like "Socrates is a man—all men are mortal—hence Socrates is mortal," but more like "Helga is a human being—all telephone booths have been vandalized—hence Helga must die." Or like: "Hitler is a human being—all Jews are animals—hence all Jews must die."
Author: Harry Mulisch

19. "But now the giant heads of Plato and Socrates, each with an expression of penetrating wisdom carved on his white features, surveyed the river and the melon beds beyond."
Author: J.G. Farrell

20. "Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, "I love to go and see all the things I am happy without."
Author: Jack Kornfield

21. "He was just a kid. He didn't care. He was like, "I'm getting in my mom's van and I'm going home." I was just a kid, too. But I cared. With him gone, who was I going to play Plato and Socrates with?"
Author: Jarod Kintz

22. "Bigger questions, questions with more than one answer, questions without an answer are the hardest to cope with in silence. Once asked they do not evaporate and leave the mind to its serener musings. Once asked they gain dimension and texture, trip you on the stairs, wake you at night-time. A black hole sucks up its surroundings and even light never escapes. Better then to ask no questions? Better then to be a contented pig than an unhappy Socrates? Since factory farming is tougher on pigs than it is on philosophers I'll take a chance."
Author: Jeanette Winterson

23. "In another 2,400 years, even Socrates, the most well-known genius of the century, might be forgotten. The future will erase everything--there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible."
Author: John Green

24. "Normally, if someone's legacy will outlast their life, it's apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon, or Socrates, or Muhammad died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny, failed movement appeared clearly at an end."
Author: John Ortberg

25. "It is Plato's portrait of Socrates that has inspired thinkers in the Western world for nearly 2.500 years."
Author: Jostein Gaarder

26. "As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil."
Author: Jostein Gaarder

27. "To be is to do - SocratesTo do is to be - SartreDo Be Do Be Do - Sinatra"
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

28. "Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason Socrates defined philosophy as thanatou mélétè (preparation for death; Plato, Phaedo, 81a). Indeed, without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing."
Author: Luce Irigaray

29. "Which is recorded of Socrates, that he was able both to abstain from, and to enjoy, those things which many are too weak to abstain from, and cannot enjoy without excess. But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul."
Author: Marcus Aurelius

30. "Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on 'The Survival of the Fittest.' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution."
Author: Mark Twain

31. "Socrates should have written comics."
Author: Mark Waid

32. "Out of them all, Socrates is the hardest to deconstruct... Indeed, he may just be indeconstructible."
Author: Martin Cohen

33. "Socrates didn't care to visit the theater, as a rule, except when the plays of Euripides (which some think, he himself had helped to compose), were performed."
Author: Moses Mendelssohn

34. "Socrates' fame spread all over Greece, and the most respected and educated men from all around came to him, in order to enjoy his friendly company and instruction."
Author: Moses Mendelssohn

35. "When Socrates was about 30, and his father was long dead, he was still pursuing the art of sculpture, but from necessity, and without much inclination."
Author: Moses Mendelssohn

36. "Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all.Bertha: What's that?Socrates: Philosophy.Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here. Socrates: Where are they?Bertha: In the philosophy department.Socrates: Philosophy is not department. Bertha: Well, we have philosophers.Socrates: Are they dangerous?Bertha: Of course not.Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers."
Author: Peter Kreeft

37. "Socrates: "The corruption of the best things are the worst things." Or, "The best, when corrupted, become the worst." As one of your English poets has said, "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
Author: Peter Kreeft

38. "["F]or it's not possible," [Socrates] said, "for anybody to experience a greater evil than hating arguments. Hatred of arguments and hatred of human beings come about in the same way. For hatred of human beings arises from artlessly trusting somebody to excess, and believing that human being to be in every way true and sound and trustworthy, and then a little later discovering that this person is wicked and untrustworthy - and then having this experience again with another. And whenever somebody experiences this many times, and especially at the hands of just those he might regard as his most intimate friends and comrades, he then ends up taking offense all the time and hates all human beings and believes there's nothing at all sound in anybody."
Author: Plato

39. "I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us."
Author: Plato

40. "To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death wheather it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to man; but people dread it as though they were certain it is the greatest evil." -The Last Days of Socrates"
Author: Plato

41. "And Agathon said, It is probable, Socrates, that I knew nothing of what I had said.And yet spoke you beautifully, Agathon, he said."
Author: Plato

42. "Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder."
Author: Ray Bradbury

43. "We have never sought power. We have sought to disperse power, to set men and women free. That really means: to help them to discover that they are free. Everybody's free. The slave is free. The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences. 'Fear is failure.' 'The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.' "Thou hast no right but to do thy will.' The goose can break the bottle at any second. Socrates took the hemlock to prove it. Jesus went to the cross to prove it. It's in all history, all myth, all poetry. It's right out in the open all the time."
Author: Robert Anton Wilson

44. "And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth."
Author: Robert Nozick

45. "At my father's club, sitting before the fire, we had spoken of 'moments made eternity', meaning what are called timeless moments, moments precisely without the pressure of time--moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. And we had clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus-the bell about to ring, the holiday about to end, the going down from Oxford foreseen...Life itself is pressured by death, the final terminus. Socrates refused to delay his own death for a few more hours: perhaps he knew that those few hours under the pressure of time would be worth little....Awareness of duration, of terminus, spoils Now."
Author: Sheldon Vanauken

46. "Anyhow, the criterion of common sense was never applicable to the history of the human race. Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekends exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home?"
Author: Stanisław Lem

47. "Aristotle drew a distinction between essential and accidental properties. The way he put it is that essential properties are those without which a thing wouldn't be what it is, and accidental properties are those that determine how a thing is, but not what it is. For example, Aristotle thought that rationality was essential to being a human being and, since Socrates was a human being, Socrates's rationality was essential to his being Socrates. Without the property of rationality, Socrates simply wouldn't be Socrates. He wouldn't even be a human being, so how could he be Socrates? On the other hand, Aristotle thought that Socrates's property of being snub-nosed was merely accidental; snub-nosed was part of how Socrates was, but it wasn't essential to what or who he was. To put it another way, take away Socrates's rationality, and he's no longer Socrates, but give him plastic surgery, and he's Socrates with a nose job."
Author: Thomas Cathcart

48. "I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies."
Author: Walter Mosley

49. "But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart."
Author: William Lyon Phelps

50. "All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates."
Author: Woody Allen

Socrate Quotes Pictures