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
This discussion is not about any chance question, but about the way one should live.
—Socrates
Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
—Socrates
Topics: Blessings, Prayer
If I can assign names as well as pictures to objects, the right assignment of them we may call truth, and the wrong assignment of them falsehood.
—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 and experience of them.
—Socrates
Topics: Sincerity, Honesty, Hypocrisy, Character, World
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: Kindness, Goodness, Excellence, Action, Virtue
Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.
—Socrates
Topics: Happiness
Wisdom begins in wonder.
—Socrates
Topics: Wisdom
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
Topics: Listening
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
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
Topics: Speech, Words, Talking
The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.
—Socrates
Topics: Humor
A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution of body nor knowledge of mind.
—Socrates
Topics: Industry
If thou take delight in idle argumentation, thou mayest be qualified to combat with the sophists, but will never know how to live with men.
—Socrates
To do is to be.
—Socrates
Topics: Doing, Secrets of Success
The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.
—Socrates
Topics: Wisdom
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
—Socrates
Topics: Friends, Friendship
If a man would move the world, he must first move himself.
—Socrates
Topics: Secrets of Success
Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
—Socrates
Topics: Fame, One liners
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
—Socrates
Topics: Wisdom
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
Topics: Love
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
—Socrates
Topics: Wisdom, Virtues, Knowledge
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
—Socrates
Topics: Riches, Contentment, Wealth
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
Listen not to a tale-bearer or slanderer, for he tells thee nothing out of good will; but as he discovereth of the secrets of others, so he will of thine in turn.
—Socrates
Topics: Slander
I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money, and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.
—Socrates
The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.
—Socrates
Topics: One liners, Weight
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 that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
—Socrates
Topics: Death, Nature
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
—Socrates
Topics: Contentment, Luxury, One liners
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
—Socrates
Topics: Correction, Praise, Reform, Criticism
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
—Socrates
Topics: Politics
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