Socrates

I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live.

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

Understanding a question is half an answer.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

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

Man must be a product of his environment.

Virtue is not given by money, but from virtue comes money and all other good things to man, both private and public.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, for fear may be inspired by the apprehension of evil, whereas reverence is that apprehension of evil which is accompanied by a sense of honor.

All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

He is richest who is content with the least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power of doing good.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways—I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed from the fuller to the emptier, as water does from a fuller cup to an emptier one when we thread a piece of wool between them.

I am a 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 all of you.

If you want to be a good horseman, you must learn to ride a bad horse.

I am not at all concerned about what the many say about me, but about what he who understands justice and injustice, the one man who is truth itself, will say.