Socrates Quotes
Socrates was a classical Athenian philosopher credited as a founder of Western philosophy. He wrote nothing himself; his ideas survive through the dialogues of his students, chiefly Plato and Xenophon. The quotes below are attributed to Socrates, organized by topic.
Browse Socrates by topic
Socrates on Death
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Attributed to Socrates:
“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”
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Attributed to Socrates:
“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
Socrates on God
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“Socrates' prayer, Phaedrus , 279”
Oh dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.
Socrates on Happiness
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Attributed to Socrates:
“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”
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“In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.”
Phaedrus
Socrates on Knowledge
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Attributed to Socrates:
“I know that I know nothing.”
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“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
Variant: The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. | Socrates II: xxxi . Original Greek: ἓν μόνον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, τὴν ἐπιστήμην, καὶ ἓν μόνον κακόν, τὴν ἀμαθίαν -
“I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed ... from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty.”
Plato , Symposium , 175d -
“Plato , Symposium , 175d”
I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed ... from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty. -
“It would be better for me... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.”
Gorgias , 482c -
“Oh dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.”
Socrates' prayer, Phaedrus , 279 -
“Plato, Crito 49c–d (translated by G.M.A. Grube)”
One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him. -
“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?”
Crito -
“μηδὲν πρὸ τοῦ δικαίου”
Nothing is to be preferred before justice | Crito , 54b3 (as translated by Ralph Waldo Emerson) [ 1 ]
Socrates on Life
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Attributed to Socrates:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates on Love
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Attributed to Socrates:
“The hottest love has the coldest end.”
Socrates on Nature
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“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.”
Plato, Crito 49c–d (translated by G.M.A. Grube)
Socrates on Truth
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“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
Plato, Phaedo 115e
Socrates on Virtue
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Attributed to Socrates:
“Be as you wish to seem.”
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Attributed to Socrates:
“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
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Attributed to Socrates:
“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavour to be what you desire to appear.”
Things actually not said by Socrates
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Socrates but are in fact from someone else. Did Socrates say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
This line was written by the Scottish minister and author John Watson, under the pen name Ian MacLaren, in an 1897 Christmas message published in The British Weekly. The original phrasing was 'Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.' It has been misattributed to Plato, Socrates, Philo of Alexandria, and others, but does not appear in any of their works.
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
This saying is sometimes credited to Socrates and sometimes to Eleanor Roosevelt or Henry Thomas Buckle, but no original source has been verified for any of these attributions. It does not appear in any dialogue of Plato or Xenophon, nor in Diogenes Laertius. The earliest verifiable form, 'Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people,' surfaces in compilations from the early 20th century.
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
This line is a modern English paraphrase of a passage in Plutarch's essay On Listening to Lectures, where Plutarch writes that 'the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.' Plutarch wrote five centuries after Socrates and the line is not attributed to Socrates in any classical source.
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“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.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Adapted from a passage in Schools of Hellas , the posthumously published dissertation of Kenneth John Freeman (1907). The original passage was a paraphrase of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. See the Quote Investigator article . | see Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary o
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: No findable citation to Socrates. Found ascribed to Socrates in Stephen Covey (1992), Principle Centered Leadership (1990) p. 51 .
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, and the other perpetual.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Actually from Isocrates , it can be found on p. 213 of Classical Rhetoric in English, 1650-1800: A Critical Anthology , part of a 1703 translation of a letter Isocrates wrote to his friend Demonicus which begins on p. 210 . Earliest source found attributing it to Socrates was an 1875 book called The
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“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.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Presented as a full Socrates quote by various sources like this page , the first sentence of the quote is indeed attributed to Socrates in Plato's dialogue The Apology , but the second sentence is a description of Socrates' beliefs by Robert C. Solomon in his 1989 book Introducing Philosophy: A Text
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Sometimes presented as a direct quote, this was actually Manuel J. Smith's own general description of Socrates' teachings in his 1974 book When I Say No, I Feel Guilty , on p. 65 of the 1975 edition .
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Does not appear attributed to Socrates in any known ancient writings. Earliest source found on google books is p. 123 of John Taylor's 2013 book Chewing The Cud: Alcibiades and Socrates Talk Life, Love and Nietzsche , in an original dialogue written by Taylor. But he may have gotten the line from th
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Origin unknown. Attributed to Sydney Smith in Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955) by Herbert Prochnow, p. 190. Variant reported in Why Are You Single? (1949) by Hilda Holland, p. 49: «When asked by a young man whether to marry, Socrates is said to have replied: "By all means, marry.
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“Exercise till the mind feels delight in reposing from the fatigue.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: First appearance on google books is C. Edwards Lester's 1845 English translation of Ansaldo Ceba's book Il Cittadino di Repubblica , translated as The Citizen of a Republic , which on p. 92 says "Moderate exercise is also indispensable; its bounds seem to have been fixed by Socrates—'Exercise till t
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“Wisdom begins in wonder.”
The exact phrase 'wisdom begins in wonder' does not appear in any surviving Greek text. The closest source is Plato's Theaetetus 155d, where Socrates says 'wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder' — a related but distinct claim. Aristotle's Metaphysics 982b makes a similar point. The modern English compression is not a direct translation of either.
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
This is actually a quotation from a character named Socrates in Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives , by Dan Millman .
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”
See All I know is that I know nothing on Wikipedia for a detailed account of the origins of this attribution. μοι νυνὶ γέγονεν ἐκ τοῦ διαλόγου μηδὲν εἰδέναι· ὁπότε γὰρ τὸ δίκαιον μὴ οἶδα ὅ ἐστιν, σχολῇ εἴσομαι εἴτε ἀρετή τις οὖσα τυγχάνει εἴτε καὶ οὔ, καὶ πότερον ὁ ἔχων αὐτὸ οὐκ εὐδαίμων ἐστὶν ἢ εὐδαίμων. Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy. Republic , 354b-c (conclusion of book I), as translated by M.A. Grube in Republic (Grube Edition) (1992) revised by C.D.C. Reeve, p. 31 Confer Apology 21d (see…
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Did Socrates say this? No.
“μοι νυνὶ γέγονεν ἐκ τοῦ διαλόγου μηδὲν εἰδέναι· ὁπότε γὰρ τὸ δίκαιον μὴ οἶδα ὅ ἐστιν, σχολῇ εἴσομαι εἴτε ἀρετή τις οὖσα τυγχάνει εἴτε καὶ οὔ, καὶ πότερον ὁ ἔχων αὐτὸ οὐκ εὐδαίμων ἐστὶν ἢ εὐδαίμων.”
Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy. Republic , 354b-c (conclusion of book I), as translated by M.A. Grube in Republic (Grube Edition) (1992) revised by C.D.C. Reeve, p. 31