Inspirational Quotes by Socrates (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Inspirational Quotations by Socrates (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Socrates (c.469–399 BCE) was the Greek philosopher considered the father of western philosophy. Socrates’s most famous student, Plato, taught Aristotle, who later tutored Alexander the Great. By this progression, Greek philosophy, as first developed by Socrates, spread throughout the known world during Alexander’s conquests.

Socrates, like his father, was a prominent stonemason before fighting in the Peloponnesian War. His father’s bequest was adequate for Socrates to live moderately in Athens without working.

Socrates’s focus as a philosopher was on living a good and virtuous life. He inspired his followers to think for themselves instead of following society’s prescriptions and the accepted superstitions regarding the gods. According to Plato, Socrates declared, “An unexamined life is not worth living” (Apology, 38b.)

Socrates gained a reputation as a questioner of everything and everyone. His method of teaching—celebrated as the Socratic Method—entailed not conveying knowledge directly, but instead asking question after clarifying question until his students reached their understanding by exposing and dispelling errors.

Socrates is a mystery, even amongst philosophers. He did not find a school or leave any writings. His reputation as one of history’s greatest philosophers was created by disciples such as Plato and Xenophon rather than through the efforts of Socrates himself. All known information about Socrates is second-hand, and most of it vigorously disputed.

Socrates’s habit of crushing influential figures in debate garnered him more enemies than followers. Socrates was convicted and sentenced to death for corrupting the Athenian youth by “denying the gods recognized by the state and introducing new divinities, and, secondly, of corrupting the young.” He died by drinking an executioner’s cup of poisonous hemlock, surrounded by his friends and disciples in his prison cell in Athens. Per Plato, “Such was the end of our friend, a man, I think, who was the wisest and justest, and the best man I have ever known” (Phaedo, pp. 118.)

Socrates’s influence was felt directly in the actions of his disciples as they formed their analysis of his life, teachings, and death. They launched their philosophical schools and wrote about their experiences with their teacher.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Socrates

Beware the banality of a busy life.
—Socrates

The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.
—Socrates
Topics: Envy, Defects

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
—Socrates
Topics: Beauty

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
Topics: Philosophy

Wealth does not bring about excellence (aka Kindness, Virtue, Goodness), but excellence (aka Kindness, Virtue, Goodness) brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.
—Socrates
Topics: Excellence, Action, Virtue, Kindness, Goodness

Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.
—Socrates
Topics: Control

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
—Socrates
Topics: Wisdom

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way. Force is of no use to make or preserve a friend, who is an animal that is never caught nor tamed but by kindness and pleasure. Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own.
—Socrates
Topics: Friendship

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
—Socrates
Topics: Potential

By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.
—Socrates
Topics: Society, Marriage

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
—Socrates

There is only one good—knowledge; and only one evil—ignorance.
—Socrates
Topics: Evil

The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods.
—Socrates
Topics: Desire, Desires

My advice to you is to get married. If you find a good wife, you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.
—Socrates
Topics: Philosophy, Happy, Marriage, Become, Wife, Advice, Vice, Good

He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who might be better employed.
—Socrates
Topics: Idleness, Purpose

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better, nor more agreeably than in having a clear conscience.
—Socrates
Topics: Conscience

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
Topics: Government

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
—Socrates
Topics: Attitude

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
—Socrates
Topics: Friendship, Friends

If you’re finding that work, relationships, and life in general don’t make you feel energized and hopeful about the future, that’s a good indication that you’ve probably lost touch with your real self and could use some insight into the person you’ve become. The soul, like the body, accepts by practice whatever habit one wishes it to contact.
—Socrates

If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
—Socrates
Topics: Wealth, Riches

How many are the things I can do without!
—Socrates
Topics: Possessions, Property

The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.
—Socrates
Topics: One liners, Weight

The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it…….Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.
—Socrates
Topics: Death

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
Topics: Greed

The warrior is here, now.
—Socrates

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.
—Socrates
Topics: Knowledge

I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the world
—Socrates

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
—Socrates
Topics: Wealth, Riches, Contentment

What is in conformity with justice should also be in conformity to the laws.
—Socrates
Topics: Justice