Top 300 Socrates Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 6 of 7

251. “Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.”

— Socrates

252. “All wars are fought for the acquisition of wealth.”

— Socrates

253. “I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence.”

— Socrates

254. “Regard your good name as the richest jewel yoou can possibly be possessed of.”

— Socrates

255. “I call that man idle who might be better employed.”

— Socrates

256. “The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.”

— Socrates

257. “Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”

— Socrates

258. “I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.”

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

260. “Why do you wonder that globetrotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason that set you wandering is ever at your heels.”

— Socrates

261. “If you can do only a little. Do what you can. What you cannot enforce, do not command.”

— Socrates

262. “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

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

— Socrates

264. “I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.”

— Socrates

265. “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

266. “It is possible that a man could live twice as long if he didn’t spend the first half of his life acquiring habits that shortens the other half.”

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

268. “I have not sought during my life to amass wealth and to adorn my body, but I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience, and above all with a love of liberty.”

— Socrates

269. “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

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

— Socrates

271. “The warm love has the coldest end.”

— Socrates

272. “I know what I do not know.”

— Socrates

273. “What most counts is not merely to live, but to live right.”

— Socrates

274. “The partisan when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.”

— Socrates

275. “Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.”

— Socrates

276. “In every sort of danger there are various ways of winning through, if one is ready to do and say anything whatever.”

— Socrates

277. “Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires.”

— Socrates

278. “All that I know is nothing – I’m not even sure of that.”

— Socrates

279. “No one does wrong voluntarily.”

— Socrates

280. “The beginning is the most important part, especially when dealing with anything young and tender.”

— Socrates

281. “Get married, in any case. If you happen to get a good mate, you will be happy; if a bad one, you will become philosophical, which is a fine thing in itself.”

— Socrates

282. “Is it not, then, better to be ridiculous and friendly than clever and hostile?”

— Socrates

283. “Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show.”

— Socrates

284. “Before the birth of Love, many fearful things took place through the empire of necessity; but when this god was born, all things rose to men.”

— Socrates

285. “When you propose ridiculous things to believe, too many men will choose to believe nothing at all.”

— Socrates

286. “The bad one is that way because of the ignorance, therefore he can be healed with wisdom.”

— Socrates

287. “If I can assign names as well as pictures to objects, the right assignment of them we may call truth, and the wrong assignment of them falsehood.”

— Socrates

288. “The same wind is blowing, and yet one of us may be cold and the other not.”

— Socrates

289. “I am very conscious that I am not wise at all.”

— Socrates

290. “The greatest of all mysteries is the man himself.”

— Socrates

291. “Why should I resent it when an ass kicks me?”

— Socrates

292. “For who is there but you? Who not only claim to be a good man and a gentleman, for many are this, and yet have not the power of making others good. Whereas you are not only good yourself, but also the cause of goodness in others.”

— Socrates

293. “He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.”

— Socrates

294. “Wisdom adorneth riches and casteth a shadow over poverty.”

— Socrates

295. “Not I, but the city teaches.”

— Socrates

296. “Listen not to a tale-bearer or slanderer, for he tells thee nothing out of good-will; but as he discovereth of the secrets of others, so he will of thine in turn.”

— Socrates

297. “Whoever would have his body supple, easy and healthful should learn to dance.”

— Socrates

298. “A man should inure himself to voluntary labor, and not give up to indulgence and pleasure, as they beget no good constitution of body nor knowledge of mind.”

— Socrates

299. “A man can no more make a safe use of wealth without reason than he can of a horse without a bridle.”

— Socrates

300. “Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, ‘How many things I have no need of!’”

— Socrates