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Quotes by Socrates

Quotes By Socrates

Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.

 

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

 

Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance. We are even comfortable with that ignorance, because it is all we know. When we first start facing truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives. But if you continue to seek truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better. In fact, you want more! It's true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don't care. Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant

 

Do it because it's in your heart. Not because you want something in return. Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

 

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.

 

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

 

No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training; it is part of his profession as a citizen to keep himself in good condition... [It is] a disgrace for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and the strength of which his body is capable.

 

Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen.

 

No one can teach, if by teaching we mean the transmission of knowledge, in any mechanical fashion, from one person to another. The most that can be done is that one person who is more knowledgeable than another can, by asking a series of questions, stimulate the other to think, and so cause him to learn for himself.

 

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

 

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

 

The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles.

 

I am a Citizen of the World, and my Nationality is Goodwill.

 

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

 

In every person there is a sun. Just let them shine.

 

Obligation sends the children to bed on time, but love tucks the covers in around their necks and passes out kisses and hugs. Yesterday is about experience; tomorrow is about hope; today is about transitioning from one to the other. The happiest people on earth don't have the best of everything... they make the best of everything I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

 

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

 

When a woman is allowed to become a man's equal, she becomes his superior.

 

Whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man - whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyse the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.

 

Marry or marry not, in any either case you'll regret it

 

Wisdom begins in wonder.

 

Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth

 

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

 

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

 

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

 

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