Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, … - Socrates

I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.

From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.

We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I — what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

¿No te parece suficientemente bien dicho que no hay que respetar todas las opiniones de los hombres, sino unas sí y otras no; ni todas las de todos, sino las de uno sí y no las de otros? De ser así, ¿no serán las buenas precisamente las de los sensatos, y las malas las de los insensatos?

Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.