Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greekphilosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, though it is unclear the degree to which Socrates himself is "hidden behind his 'best disciple', Plato"...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPhilosopher
hands needs tasks
The hardest task needs the lightest hand or else its completion will not lead to freedom but to a tyranny much worse than the one it replaces.
needs known values
The friend must be like money, that before you need it, the value is known.
needs mass
Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many things I have no need of!'
needs
What a lot of things I don't need.
war animal needs
If we pursue our habit of eating animals, and if our neighbour follows a similar path, will we need to go to war against our neighbour to secure greater pasturage, because ours will not be enough to sustain us, and our neighbour will have a similar need to wage war on us for the same reason.
long needs enough
I have lived long enough to learn how much there is I can really do without.... He is nearest to God who needs the fewest things.
appear experience honor human increase practice reality shortest strengthen surest themselves virtues
The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.
ashamed care caring fame improvement money neither nor truth wisdom
Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?
enjoy enjoyment later
Enjoy yourself -- it's later than you think.
artificial contentment luxury natural poverty
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty
good men virtue
Virtue does not come from wealth, but. . . wealth, and every other good thing which men have. . . comes from virtue.
beauty inward man outward
Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.
bare compliments giving sensible
Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.
knowledge
One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.