Top 300 Socrates Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 5 of 7

201. “Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods.”

— Socrates

202. “This is a universe that does not favor the timid.”

— Socrates

203. “If at first you don’t succeed, avoid skydiving.”

— Socrates

204. “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

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

— Socrates

206. “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

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

— Socrates

208. “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

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

— Socrates

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

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

216. “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

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

219. “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

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

— Socrates

221. “In my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable.”

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

224. “Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”

— Socrates

225. “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

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

229. “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

230. “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

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

233. “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

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

— Socrates

235. “Go wherever the facts lead.”

— Socrates

236. “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

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

240. “Marry or marry not, in any either case you’ll regret it.”

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

242. “Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.”

— Socrates

243. “Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy.”

— Socrates

244. “Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.”

— Socrates

245. “If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.”

— Socrates

246. “The rest of the world lives to eat, while I eat to live.”

— Socrates

247. “I know what I do not know.”

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

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

— Socrates