Top 300 Socrates Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “Nothing is so well learned as that which is discovered.”

— Socrates

203. “A good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death.”

— Socrates

204. “Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?”

— Socrates

205. “God does not deal directly with man: it is by means of spirits that all the intercourse and communication of gods with men, both in waking life and in sleep, is carried on.”

— Socrates

206. “One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice.”

— Socrates

207. “Exercise till the mind feels delight in reposing from the fatigue.”

— Socrates

208. “One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.”

— Socrates

209. “May the outward and inward man be at one.”

— Socrates

210. “If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.”

— Socrates

211. “One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one may have suffered from them.”

— Socrates

212. “One cannot come closer to the gods than by bringing health to his Fellow Man.”

— Socrates

213. “How many things are there which I do not want.”

— Socrates

214. “In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.”

— Socrates

215. “Man’s life is like a drop of dew on a leaf.”

— Socrates

216. “The first key to greatness is to be in reality what we appear to be.”

— Socrates

217. “The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.”

— Socrates

218. “Laws are not made for the good.”

— Socrates

219. “When a woman is allowed to become a man’s equal, she becomes his superior.”

— Socrates

220. “It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.”

— Socrates

221. “It is not difficult to avoid death. It is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.”

— Socrates

222. “Let he who would move the world, first complete an environmental impact assessment and a 90-day public comment period.”

— Socrates

223. “There is no difference between knowledge and temperance; for he who knows what is good and embraces it, who knows what is bad and avoids it, is learned and temperate.”

— Socrates

224. “How can you call a man free when his pleasures rule over him.”

— Socrates

225. “To express oneself badly is not only faulty as far as the language goes, but does some harm to the soul.”

— Socrates

226. “To need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs the nearer does he approach to divinity.”

— Socrates

227. “There are two kinds of disease of the soul, vice and ignorance.”

— Socrates

228. “To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.”

— Socrates

229. “We can do nothing without the body, let us always take care that it is in the best condition to sustain us.”

— Socrates

230. “They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.”

— Socrates

231. “There’s no good answer to a question you didn’t hear.”

— Socrates

232. “You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.”

— Socrates

233. “And I say let a man be of good cheer about his soul. When the soul has been arrayed in her own proper jewels – temperance and justice, and courage, and nobility and truth – she is ready to go on her journey when the hour comes.”

— Socrates

234. “A free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly, for nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind.”

— Socrates

235. “The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.”

— Socrates

236. “If he who does not know kept silent, discord would cease.”

— Socrates

237. “Go wherever the facts lead.”

— Socrates

238. “But already it is time to depart, for me to die, for you to go on living; which of us takes the better course, is concealed from anyone except God.”

— Socrates

239. “Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.”

— Socrates

240. “There is no illness of the body except for the mind.”

— Socrates

241. “The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion.”

— Socrates

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

242. “The uninitiated are those who believe in nothing except what they can grasp in their hands, and who deny the existence of all that is invisible.”

— Socrates

243. “The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can.”

— Socrates

244. “The reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.”

— Socrates

245. “The individual leads in order that those who are led can develop their potential as human beings and thereby prosper.”

— Socrates

246. “There is no greater magnificence than to defeat oneself. That is the magnificence...”

— Socrates

247. “False language, evil in itself, infects the soul with evil.”

— Socrates

248. “A disorderly mob is no more an army than a heap of building materials is a house.”

— Socrates

249. “An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all.”

— Socrates

250. “No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.”

— Socrates