Quotes about Socrates

227 Sourced Quotes

Jesus would not be crucified today. The prophets would not be stoned. Socrates would not drink the hemlock. They would instead be banned from the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages by the sentries of establishment thinking who guard against dissent with the one weapon of mass destruction most cleverly designed to obliterate democracy: the rubber stamp.

PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, "I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.

The revolutionary nature of the Republic in my opinion lies not in its exposure of the dangers of extremism in the name of justice but in the frank, shockingly open statement by Socrates of what is required if we take seriously, and follow consistently, the political implications of philosophical wisdom.

Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way.
All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.
Socrates and Galileo, John Brown, Thoreau, Christ, and Debs
Heard the night cry down with traitors, and the dawn shout "Up the reds!"

I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

John Gardner (American writer)

Which is recorded of Socrates, that he was able both to abstain from, and to enjoy, those things which many are too weak to abstain from, and cannot enjoy without excess. But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul.

Marcus Aurelius

Class consciousness — yes, the theory is all too true. But there is a third class, that of Socrates, that of the inexorable.

Socrates thought that if all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most persons would be contented to take their own and depart.

Both Socrates and Christ taught economic man to be at least slightly ashamed of himself when he failed to sacrifice the lower capacity to the higher. Freud is America's great teacher, despite his ardent wish to avoid that fate. For it was precisely the official and parental shams of high ideals that Freud questioned. In their stead, Freud taught lessons which Americans, prepared by their own national experience, learn easily: survive, resign yourself to living within your moral means, suffer no gratuitous failures in a futile search for ethical heights that no longer exist—if they ever did.

No longer did philosophers aspire to the deep spiritual insights and broad moral vision of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They divided into conflicting schools and wandered through the Greco-Roman world as permanent immigrants, picking up tutoring jobs as they could.... the upshot was a debased intellectual climate, fragmented and agnostic.

Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.

And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth.

You, Socrates, began by saying that virtue can't be taught, and now you are insisting on the opposite, trying to show that all things are knowledge, justice, soundness of mind, even courage, from which it would follow that virtue most certainly can be taught.

Irony, which in Socrates' case consists of saying too little, functions for him just as hyperbole, which is saying too much, functions for Nietzsche.

Alexander Nehamas

Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.

Steven Pressfield

I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate. (Socrates, I believe, saw something of this when he suggested that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to mistrust or hatred of man).

Know thyself,' said Socrates. Know thyself,' said Sappho, 'and make sure that the Church never finds out.

Jeanette Winterson

For the Greeks who believed in the immortality of the soul it may have been harder to accept the Christian preaching of the resurrection than it was for others.... The teaching of the great philosophers Socrates and Plato can in no way be brought into consonance [agreement] with that of the New Testament.

And so, from this day forth, we want all the more to let our thoughts revolve around and hover over Socrates and Christ at all times, openly taking pride that they are more alive for us than all those living today and that we listen to and love them as we do none of the living.

Constantin Brunner

Socrates and Jesus, two teachers of virtue and love, were executed because of the unsettling, threatening power of their souls, which was revealed in their personal lives and in their words.

No one seriously doubts Socrates' maxim: The unexamined life isn't worth living. Self-assessment and attempts at self-improvement are essential aspects of "the good life." Yes, we should engage in ruthless self-reflection and harsh scrutiny, but we should simultaneously acknowledge that such introspection will, at best, only result in a partial view of our minds at work. Complete objectivity is not an option.

Robert A. Burton

In the Republic, Socrates seems to agree with his analytically oriented contemporary admirers that poetry is conceptually inferior to philosophy.

In the Western tradition, we have focused on teaching as a skill and forgotten what Socrates knew: teaching is a gift, learning is a skill.

Socrates was likewise right that pissing people off is how we first, and maybe best, go about the business of provoking thought.

Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies.

Strepsiades: But come, by the Earth, is not Zeus, the Olympian, a god?
Socrates: What Zeus? Do not trifle. There is no Zeus.

I consider that in dialectics I am the equal of Socrates. As to women, I agree that each has three or four souls, but none of them a reasoning one.

Henryk Sienkiewicz