Socrates Quotes

If the soul is immortal, it demands our care not only for that part of time which we call life, but for all time; and indeed it would seem now that it will be extremely dangerous to neglect it. If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked, because by dying they would be released not only from the body but also from their own wickedness together with the soul; but as it is, since the soul is clearly immortal, it can have no escape of security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can. For it takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training...

Man, you don’t speak well, if you believe that a man worth anything at all would give countervailing weight to the danger of life or death, or give consideration to anything but this when he acts: whether his action is just or unjust, the action of a good or of an evil man.

If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.

And thus one man makes a vortex all round and steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives the air as support for the earth, which is sort of a broad trough. Any power which in disposing them as they are disposes them for the best never enters into their minds, not do they imagine that there is any superhuman strength in that; they rather expect to find another Atlas of the world who is stronger and more everlasting and more containing than the good is, and are clearly of the opinion that the obligatory and containing power of the good is as nothing; and yet this is the principle which I would fain learn if anyone would teach me. But as I have failed either to discover myself or to learn of anyone else, the nature of the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have found to be the second best mode of inquiring into the cause.

Pues bien, cuando alguien se da a la
música y deja que le inunde el alma derramando por sus oídos, como por un canal, aquellas
dulces, suaves y lastimeras armonías de que
hablábamos hace poco y pasa su vida entera
entre gorjeos y goces musicales, esta persona
comienza por templar, como el fuego al hierro,
la fogosidad que pueda albergar su espíritu y
hacerla útil de dura e inservible. Pero si persiste
y no cesa de entregarse a su hechizo, entonces
ya no hará otra cosa que liquidar y ablandar
ésta su fogosidad hasta que, derretida ya por
completo, cortados, por así decirlo, los tendones del alma, la persona se transforma en un
«feble guerrero»

And in knowing that you know nothing makes you the smartest of all.

Damn son, where'd you find this?

If we are to use women for the same things as the men, we must also teach them the same things.

Nothing is more uncommon than a very large or a very small man; and this applies generally to all extremes, whether of great and small, or swift and slow, or fair and foul, or black and white; and whether the instances you select be man or dogs or anything else, few are the extremes,but many are in the mean between them.

Every action has its pleasures and its price.

...[I]n any inquiry you are likely to attain more nearly to knowledge of your object in proportion to the care and accuracy with which you have prepared yourself to understand that object in itself[.]

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

"Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty".

The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.

Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.