Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes 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

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
Socrates
Topics: Reform, Praise, Correction, Criticism

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?
Socrates
Topics: Reflection

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

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
Socrates
Topics: Intelligence

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.
Socrates
Topics: Insults, Slander

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
Socrates
Topics: Feminism, Women

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: Become, Philosophy, Advice, Happy, Good, Wife, Vice, Marriage

One word frees us Of all the weight and pain in life, That word is Love
Socrates
Topics: Romance

I pray thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.
Socrates
Topics: Beauty, Love

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
Socrates
Topics: One liners, Fame

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.
Socrates
Topics: Wisdom

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

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.
Socrates
Topics: Humor

All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are both immortal and divine.
Socrates
Topics: Immortality

How many things there are which I do not want.
Socrates
Topics: Appreciation, Simplicity, Blessings, Gratitude

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

Let him that would move the world, first move himself.
Socrates
Topics: Action, Leadership, Influence

Man, know thyself.
Socrates
Topics: Self-Discovery

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
Socrates
Topics: Humankind, Humanity

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

Be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
Socrates
Topics: Death

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
Topics: Respect, Respectability

The greatest flood has soonest ebb; the sorest tempest, the most sudden calm; the hottest love, the coldest end; and from the deepest desire often ensues the deadliest hate.
Socrates

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: Nature, Death

The fewer our wants, the nearer we resemble the gods.
Socrates

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

Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
Socrates
Topics: Luxury, Contentment, One liners

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

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

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.
Socrates

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