Socrates

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

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

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

An honest man is always a child.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Be as you wish to seem.

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