Socrates Quotes on Knowledge
Socrates is the philosopher who claimed only to know that he knew nothing — a posture the Apology presents as the genuine wisdom that distinguishes him from Athens's confident experts. The elenchus, his cross-examining method, exposes the latent contradictions in his interlocutors' professed beliefs about justice, piety, courage, and virtue, leaving them in the productive perplexity (aporia) Socrates treats as the precondition of genuine inquiry. Plato's middle dialogues develop this Socratic ignorance into the doctrine that genuine knowledge is recollection of the eternal Forms.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Socrates:
“I know that I know nothing.”
-
“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 ]