Socrates had no system to teach. Throughout, his philosophy was a spiritual exercise, an invitation to a new way of life, active reflection, and living consciousness.

We should realize that, if [Socrates] demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did not mean the learned men; in fact, he was skeptical of all professional learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers or of the learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant was of a different kind. It was simply the realization: how little do I know! Those who did not know this, he taught, knew nothing at all. This is the true scientific spirit.

In his discussions of such matters as "What is justice?" or "What is virtue?" he took the attitude that he knew nothing and had to be instructed by others. (This is called "Socratic irony," for Socrates knew very well that he knew a great deal more than the poor souls he was picking on.) By pretending ignorance, Socrates lured others into propounding their views on such abstractions. Socrates then, by a series of ignorant-sounding questions, forced the others into such a mélange of self-contradictions that they would finally break down and admit they didn't know what they were talking about.

It is the mark of the marvelous toleration of the Athenians that they let this continue for decades and that it wasn't till Socrates turned seventy that they broke down and forced him to drink poison.

Socrates used to pronounce a curse upon those who first drew a conceptual distinction between things naturally inseparable.

Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, took his whole life to get to the point where he said, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

Socrates was the greatest of the educationalists, but unlike the others he taught gratuitously, though he was a poor man. His teachings always took the form of discussion; the discussion often ended in no positive result, but had the effect of showing that some received opinion was untenable and the truth is difficult to ascertain.

The master was never impressed by diplomas or degrees. He scrutinized the person, not the certificate. He was once heard to say, 'When you have ears to hear a bird in song, you don't need to look at its credentials."

There is an illiteracy of the soul that no diploma cures.

Socrates did not stop with a philosophical consideration of mankind; he addressed himself to each one individually, wrested everything from him, and sent him away empty-handed.

He could teach his students nothing. He was only educating himself at their cost.

In the profession of wifehood the exams begin at the church door—and there is never a final degree.

Socrates is not using dialectic to understand rhetoric, he is using it to destroy it, or at least to bring it into disrepute, and so his questions are not real questions at all—they are just word-traps which Gorgias and his fellow rhetoricians fall into.

Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.