Top 300 Socrates Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Flattery is like friendship in show, but not in fruit.”

— Socrates

302. “Through your rags I see your vanity.”

— Socrates

303. “I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.”

— Socrates

304. “The envious person grows lean with the fatness of their neighbor.”

— Socrates

305. “Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat.”

— Socrates

306. “It is not the purpose of a juryman’s office to give justice as a favor to whoever seems good to him, but to judge according to law, and this he has sworn to do.”

— Socrates

307. “Marry a good woman, and be happy the rest of your life. Or, marry a bad, and become a good philosopher.”

— Socrates

308. “A system of morality that is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception that has nothing sound in it and nothing true.”

— Socrates

309. “Every pleasure or pain has a sort of rivet with which it fastens the soul to the body and pins it down and makes it corporeal, accepting as true whatever the body certifies.”

— Socrates

310. “I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.”

— Socrates

311. “She soars on her own wings.”

— Socrates

312. “The greatest flood has the soonest ebb; the sorest tempest the most sudden calm; the hottest love the coldest end; and from the deepest desire oftentimes ensues the deadliest hate.”

— Socrates

313. “For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.”

— Socrates

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314. “The friend must be like money, that before you need it, the value is known.”

— Socrates

315. “If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.”

— Socrates

316. “Such as thy words are, such will thy affections be esteemed; and such will thy deeds be as thy affections and such thy life as thy deeds.”

— Socrates

317. “May I consider the wise man rich, and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure.”

— Socrates

318. “My belief is that to have no wants is divine.”

— Socrates

319. “If I had engaged in politics, O men of Athens, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself.”

— Socrates

320. “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”

— Socrates

321. “My divine sign indicates the future to me.”

— Socrates

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

— Socrates

323. “The soul is cured of its maladies by certain incantations; these incantations are beautiful reasons, from which temperance is generated in souls.”

— Socrates

324. “To give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god .”

— Socrates

325. “You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they have in going to the God they serve.”

— Socrates

326. “Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of.”

— Socrates

327. “Since I am convinced that I wrong no one, I am not likely to wrong myself.”

— Socrates

328. “Aren’t you ashamed to be concerned so much about making all the money you can and advancing your reputation and prestige, while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your souls you have no thought or car?”

— Socrates

329. “I will not yield to any man contrary to what is right, for fear of death, even if I should die at once for not yielding.”

— Socrates

330. “Is there anyone to whom you entrust a greater number of serious matters than your wife? And is there anyone with whom you have fewer conversations?”

— Socrates

331. “Wind buffs up empty bladders; opinion, fools.”

— Socrates

332. “It was far too cold. The second I got out I had this incredible headache, I’m just not used to it. The last time I saw snow was years and years ago.”

— Socrates

333. “If thou continuous to take delight in idle argumentation thou mayest be qualified to combat with the sophists, but will never know how to live with men.”

— Socrates

334. “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, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding?”

— Socrates

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335. “No man is capable of causing great evil without thinking he’s doing the right thing.”

— Socrates

336. “Trust not a woman when she weeps, for it is her nature to weep when she wants her will.”

— Socrates

337. “The mind is everything; what you think you become.”

— Socrates

338. “Sometimes you have to lose your mind before you come to your senses.”

— Socrates

339. “Anyone who’s really fighting for justice must live as a private citizen and not as a public figure if he’s going to survive even a short time.”

— Socrates