Socrates et al

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates
tags: knowledge, wisdom

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates
tags: inspiration, truth, wisdom


“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance
tags: greatness


“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates


“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
tags: life-choices-fig-trees 2283 likes like


“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
― Socrates
tags: knowledge, philosophy 1385 likes like


“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Socrates
tags: amazement, wisdom, wonder


“To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
― Socrates
tags: philosophy



“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
― Socrates


“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
― Socrates


“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.”
― Socrates


“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.”
― Socrates


“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
― Socrates


“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
― Socrates


“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
― Socrates


“Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art

Bullfighting can be an art
Boxing can be an art
Loving can be an art
Opening a can of sardines can be an art

Not many have style
Not many can keep style
I have seen dogs with more style than men,
although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,
that was style.
Or sometimes people give you style
Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Jesus
Socrates
Caesar
García Lorca.

I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,
or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates




“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
― Socrates


“The seriousness of throwing over hell whilst still clinging to the Atonement is obvious. If there is no punishment for sin there can be no self-forgiveness for it. If Christ paid our score, and if there is no hell and therefore no chance of our getting into trouble by forgetting the obligation, then we can be as wicked as we like with impunity inside the secular law, even from self-reproach, which becomes mere ingratitude to the Savior. On the other hand, if Christ did not pay our score, it still stands against us; and such debts make us extremely uncomfortable. The drive of evolution, which we call conscience and honor, seizes on such slips, and shames us to the dust for being so low in the scale as to be capable of them. The 'saved' thief experiences an ecstatic happiness which can never come to the honest atheist: he is tempted to steal again to repeat the glorious sensation. But if the atheist steals he has no such happiness. He is a thief and knows that he is a thief. Nothing can rub that off him. He may try to sooth his shame by some sort of restitution or equivalent act of benevolence; but that does not alter the fact that he did steal; and his conscience will not be easy until he has conquered his will to steal and changed himself into an honest man...

Now though the state of the believers in the atonement may thus be the happier, it is most certainly not more desirable from the point of view of the community. The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our hope lies now.

Consequently, even if it were mentally possible for all of us to believe in the Atonement, we should have to cry off it, as we evidently have a right to do. Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.'”
― George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion
tags: atheism, atheist, atonement, believer, credulity, danger, ethics, evolution, happiness, honor, moral-responsibility, morality, penitent, right, savior, scapegoat, sceptic, secular, secular-morality, skeptic, sober, socrates, theist, thief

“Know thyself.”
― Socrates
tags: inspirational


“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”
― Socrates
tags: knowledge-ignorance


“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
― Socrates
tags: change, self-determination, self-development


“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
― Socrates


“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
― Plato, The Republic



“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
― Socrates


“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates
tags: contentment, philosophy 284 likes like
Socrates
“Every action has its pleasures and its price.”
― Socrates
272 likes like
Socrates
“I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.

From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.

We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.”
― Socrates


“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”
― Socrates


“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”
― Socrates


“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
[As quoted in Plutarch's Of Banishment]”
― Socrates

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
― Socrates


“The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

The more indifferent people are to politics, to the interests of others, the more obsessed they become with their own faces. The individualism of our time.

Not being able to fall asleep and not allowing oneself to move: the marital bed.

If high culture is coming to an end, it is also the end of you and your paradoxical ideas, because paradox as such belongs to high culture and not to childish prattle. You remind me of the young men who supported the Nazis or communists not out of cowardice or out of opportunism but out of an excess of intelligence. For nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of nonthought… You are the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers.

In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.

How to live in a world with which you disagree? How to live with people when you neither share their suffering nor their joys? When you know that you don’t belong among them?... our century refuses to acknowledge anyone’s right to disagree with the world…All that remains of such a place is the memory, the ideal of a cloister, the dream of a cloister…

Humor can only exist when people are still capable of recognizing some border between the important and the unimportant. And nowadays this border has become unrecognizable.

The majority of people lead their existence within a small idyllic circle bounded by their family, their home, and their work... They live in a secure realm somewhere between good and evil. They are sincerely horrified by the sight of a killer. And yet all you have to do is remove them from this peaceful circle and they, too, turn into murderers, without quite knowing how it happened.

The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order. Or to put it the other way around: the desire for order is a virtuous pretext, an excuse for virulent misanthropy.

A long time a go a certain Cynic philosopher proudly paraded around Athens in a moth-eaten coat, hoping that everyone would admire his contempt for convention. When Socrates met him, he said: Through the hole in your coat I see your vanity. Your dirt, too, dear sir, is self-indulgent and your self-indulgence is dirty.

You are always living below the level of true existence, you bitter weed, you anthropomorphized vat of vinegar! You’re full of acid, which bubbles inside you like an alchemist’s brew. Your highest wish is to be able to see all around you the same ugliness as you carry inside yourself. That’s the only way you can feel for a few moments some kind of peace between yourself and the world. That’s because the world, which is beautiful, seems horrible to you, torments you and excludes you.

If the novel is successful, it must necessarily be wiser than its author. This is why many excellent French intellectuals write mediocre novels. They are always more intelligent than their books.

By a certain age, coincidences lose their magic, no longer surprise, become run-of-the-mill.

Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.”
― Milan Kundera
217 likes like
Socrates
“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
― Socrates
211 likes like
Socrates
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
― Socrates
tags: change 207 likes like
Socrates
“We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.”
― Socrates
tags: character, rectitude 203 likes like
Socrates
“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.”
― Socrates
tags: death, life-and-death 182 likes like
Socrates
“Envy is the ulcer of the soul.”
― Socrates
177 likes like
Philip K. Dick
“The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.”
― Philip K. Dick




Results for "socrates" (showing 41-60 of 533) (0.05 seconds)
Socrates
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Socrates
175 likes like
Socrates
“understanding a question is half an answer”
― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates
168 likes like
Socrates
“The hottest love has the coldest end.”
― Socrates
163 likes like
Socrates
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
― Socrates
160 likes like
Socrates
“Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.”
― Socrates
138 likes like
Socrates
“Be nicer than necessary to everyone you meet. Everyone is fighting some kind of battle.”
― Socrates
137 likes like
Jostein Gaarder
“A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.”
― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
tags: philosophy 130 likes like
Socrates
“From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”
― Socrates
128 likes like
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
tags: consistency, greatness, misunderstood 126 likes like
Socrates
“The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates
tags: honor, honour 124 likes like
Socrates
“Be as you wish to seem.”
― Socrates
123 likes like
Kurt Vonnegut
“Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
tags: examined-life, life, meaning-of-life, plato, socrates, unexamined-life 121 likes like
Socrates
“If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all.”
― Socrates
tags: quotation, saddler, socrates, tame 118 likes like
Socrates
“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”
― Socrates
tags: self-awareness, self-knowledge 118 likes like
John Stuart Mill
“It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.”
― John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
tags: capacity, enjoyment, fool, happiness, imperfections, philosophy, satisfaction, socrates 117 likes like
Michel de Montaigne
“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
tags: learning, lifelong-learning, philosophy, socrates 113 likes like
Socrates
“I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within. ”
― Socrates
107 likes like
Socrates
“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.”
― Socrates
104 likes like
Socrates
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”
― Socrates
99 likes like
Epictetus
“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.”
― Epictetus
tags: philosophy-of-life 97 likes like

David Foster Wallace

“We're all—especially those of us who are educated and have read a lot and have watched TV critically—in a very self-conscious and sort of worldly and sophisticated time, but also a time when we seem terribly afraid of other people's reactions to us and very desperate to control how people interpret us. Everyone is extremely conscious of manipulating how they come off in the media; they want to structure what they say so that the reader or audience will interpret it in the way that is most favorable to them. What's interesting to me is that this isn't all that new. This was the project of the Sophists in Athens, and this is what Socrates and Plato thought was so completely evil. The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want.” 

― David Foster Wallace

tags: 100-words-or-less-in-2009-words 95 likes like

Socrates

“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.” 

― Socrates

tags: equality, superiority, women 95 likes like

Socrates

“In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.” 

― Socrates

tags: inner-self 92 likes like

Victor Hugo

“Algebra applies to the clouds, the radiance of the star benefits the rose--no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand? Who can understand the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abyss of being and the avalanches of creation? A mite has value; the small is great, the great is small. All is balanced in necessity; frightening vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things, in this inexhaustible whole, from sun to grub, there is no scorn, each needs the other. Light does not carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths without knowing what it does with them; night distributes the stellar essence to the sleeping plants. Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's beak breaking the egg, and it guides the birth of the earthworm, and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has a greater view? Choose. A bit of mold is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an anthill of stars. The same promiscuity, and still more wonderful, between the things of the intellect and material things. Elements and principles are mingled, combined, espoused, multiplied one by another, to the point that the material world, and the moral world are brought into the same light. Phenomena are perpetually folded back on themselves. In the vast cosmic changes, universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, rolling everything up in the invisible mystery of the emanations, using everything, losing no dream from any single sleep, sowing a microscopic animal here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and gyrating, making a force of light, and an element of thought, disseminated and indivisible dissolving all, that geometric point, the self; reducing everything to the soul-atom; making everything blossom into God; entangling from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, linking the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth, subordinating--who knows, if only by the identity of the law--the evolutions of the comet in the firmament to the circling of the protozoa in the drop of water. A machine made of mind. Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last is the zodiac.” 

― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

92 likes like

Socrates

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

― Socrates

tags: contentment 90 likes like

Socrates

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” 

― Socrates

88 likes like

Plato

“To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death wheather it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to man; but people dread it as though they were certain it is the greatest evil." -The Last Days of Socrates” 

― Plato

tags: plato-socrates 84 likes like

Socrates

“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.” 

― Socrates

tags: forgiveness, nobility 84 likes like

Socrates

“The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves. ” 

― Socrates

81 likes like

Socrates

“The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.” 

― Socrates

tags: inspirational, science, truth 80 likes like

Socrates

“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” 

― Socrates

tags: contentment, happiness 79 likes like

Socrates

“Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannise their teachers.” 

― Socrates

77 likes like

Socrates

“Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.” 

― Socrates

tags: death 76 likes like

Socrates

“Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.” 

― Socrates

74 likes like

Socrates

“If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.” 

― Socrates

tags: craziness, mental-illness, writing, writing-life 74 likes like

Socrates

“Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of -- for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.” 

― Socrates

tags: honor, integrity, reputation, respect 74 likes like

Socrates

“Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.” 

― Socrates

tags: philosophy-of-life, psychology, relationships 72 likes like

Socrates

“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.” 

― Socrates

tags: death-and-dying, fear-of-death 69 likes like

Kyōichi Katayama

“It’s not the parting or the absence that’s sad. You love them, and that’s why saying good-bye breaks your heart.” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

69 likes like

Socrates

“Esteemed friend, citizen of Athens, the greatest city in the world, so outstanding in both intelligence and power, aren't you ashamed to care so much to make all the money you can, and to advance your reputation and prestige--while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul you have no care or worry?” 

― Socrates

“...he asked, "Where are you today, right now?"

Eagerly, I started talking about myself. However, I noticed that I was still being sidetracked from getting answers to my questions. Still, I told him about my distant and recent past and about my inexplicable depressions. He listened patiently and intently, as if he had all the time in the world, until I finished several hours later.

"Very well," he said. "But you still have not answered my question about where you are."

"Yes I did, remember? I told you how I got to where I am today: by hard work."

"Where are you?"

"What do you mean, where am I?"

"Where Are you?" he repeated softly.

"I'm here."

"Where is here?"

"In this office, in this gas station!" I was getting impatient with this game.

"Where is this gas station?"

"In Berkeley?"

"Where is Berkeley?"

"In California?"

"Where is California?"

"In the United States?"

"On a landmass, one of the continents in the Western Hemisphere. Socrates, I..."

"Where are the continents?

I sighed. "On the earth. Are we done yet?"

"Where is the earth?"

"In the solar system, third planet from the sun. The sun is a small star in the Milky Way galaxy, all right?"

"Where is the Milky Way?"

"Oh, brother, " I sighed impatiently, rolling my eyes. "In the universe." I sat back and crossed my arms with finality.

"And where," Socrates smiled, "is the universe?"

"The universe is well, there are theories about how it's shaped..."

"That's not what I asked. Where is it?"

"I don't know - how can I answer that?"

"That is the point. You cannot answer it, and you never will. There is no knowing about it. You are ignorant of where the universe is, and thus, where you are. In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of What anything is or how is came to be. Life is a mystery.

"My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass.” 

― Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

tags: life, listening, mystery, philosophy, universe 66 likes like

Socrates

“All men's souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.” 

― Socrates

66 likes like

Ray Bradbury

“Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people in the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you’re all to yourself that way, you’re really proud of yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.” 

― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

65 likes like

Plato

“I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.” 

― Plato, Apology

tags: apology, knowledge, plato, socrates, wisdom 63 likes like

Socrates

“My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves" -Socrates” 

― Socrates

tags: care, introspection, ourselves, psyche, self-awareness 63 likes like

Socrates

“Through your rags I see your vanity.” 

― Socrates

62 likes like

Socrates

“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.” 

― Socrates

tags: inspiration, poets 60 likes like

Socrates

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” 

― Socrates

tags: definitions, power-of-thoughts, power-of-words, rational-thought, wisdom 58 likes like

Socrates

“I only know that I know nothing” 

― Socrates

tags: creative-thinking, intellect, knowledge, philosophy, wisdom 58 likes like

Socrates

“Virtue does not come from wealth, but. . . wealth, and every other good thing which men have. . . comes from virtue.” 

― Socrates

57 likes like

Woody Allen

“Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do … I read Socrates. This guy knocked off little Greek boys. What the Hell’s he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we’re gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It’s not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.” 

― Woody Allen

56 likes like

Socrates

“The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion.” 

― Socrates

54 likes like

Dan Millman

“The world's a puzzle; no need to make sense out of it." - Socrates” 

― Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

tags: life, philosophy, puzzle, world 52 likes like

Socrates

“Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued. ” 

― Socrates

tags: life, value 52 likes like

Socrates

“My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.” 

― Socrates

tags: happiness, humour, marriage, philosophy 51 likes like

Jeanette Winterson

“Know thyself,’ said Socrates.

Know thyself,’ said Sappho, ‘and make sure that the Church never finds out.” 

― Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

51 likes like

Socrates

“I did not care for the things that most people care about– making money, having a comfortable home, high military or civil rank, and all the other activities, political appointments, secret societies, party organizations, which go on in our city . . . I set myself to do you– each one of you, individually and in private– what I hold to be the greatest possible service. I tried to persuade each one of you to concern himself less with what he has than with what he is, so as to render himself as excellent and as rational as possible.” 

― Socrates

51 likes like

Socrates

“To be is to do” 

― Socrates

50 likes like

Socrates

“And therefore if the head and the body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul; that is the first and essential thing. And the care of the soul, my dear youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these charms are fair words; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where temperance comes and stays, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but to the whole body.” 

― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates

47 likes like

Socrates

“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.” 

― Socrates

47 likes like

Socrates

“What screws us up the most in life is the picture in our head of what it's supposed to be.” 

― Socrates

51 likes like

Steve Jobs

“I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.” 

― Steve Jobs

tags: technology-vs-liberal-arts 45 likes like

Socrates

“To move the world we must move ourselves.” 

― Socrates

45 likes like

Socrates

“Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.” 

― Socrates

42 likes like

Socrates

“There is no solution; seek it lovingly ” 

― Socrates

42 likes like

Socrates

“God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us. ” 

― Socrates

tags: god, inspiration, poet, prophet, socrates 41 likes like

Socrates

“Well, although I do not suppose that either of us know anything really beautiful & good, I am better off than he is- for he knows nothing & thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.” 

― Socrates

40 likes like

Dan Millman

“It's a thought," I said with a grin.

"That's exactly what it is, Dan - a thought - no more real than the shadow of a shadow. Consciousness is not In the body; the body is In Consciousness. And you Are that Consciousness - no the phantom mind that troubles you so. You are the body, but you are everything else, too. That is what your visions revealed to you. Only the mind resists change. When you relax mindless into the body, you are happy and content and free, sensing no separation. Immortality is Already yours, but not in the same way you imagined or hope for. You have been immortal since before you were born and will be long after the body dissolves. The body is in Consciousness; never born; never dies; only changes. The mind - your ego, personal beliefs, history, and identity - is all that ends at death. And who needs it?" Socrates leaned back into his chair.

"I'm not sure all of that sank in."

"Of course not." He laughed. "Words mean little unless you realize the truth of it yourself. And when you do, you'll be free at last.” 

― Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

tags: body, consciousness, free, mind, philosophy 40 likes like

James Joyce

“If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.’ Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law. But always meeting ourselves.” 

― James Joyce, Ulysses

39 likes like

Socrates

“Wisdom begins in wonder.” 

― Socrates

39 likes like

Kurt Vonnegut

“To be is to do - Socrates.

To do is to be - Jean-Paul Satre.

Do be do be do -Frank Sinatra.” 

― Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

38 likes like

John Fowles

“I acquired expensive habits and affected manners. I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion: that I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic that my seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope-- an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. But I did absorb a small dose of one permanently useful thing, Oxford's greatest gift to civilized life: Socratic honesty. It showed me, very intermittently, that it is not enough to revolt against one's past. One day I was outrageously bitter among some friends about the Army; back in my own rooms later it suddenly struck me that just because I said with impunity things that would have apoplexed my dead father, I was still no less under his influence. The truth was I was not a cynic by nature, only by revolt. I had got away from what I hated, but I hadn't found where I loved, and so I pretended that there was nowhere to love. Handsomely equipped to fail, I went out into the world.” 

― John Fowles, The Magus

38 likes like

E.L. Doctorow

“The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one had ever been put to death in Socrates' name. And that is because Socrates' ideas were never made law. Law, in whatever name, protects privilege.” 

― E.L. Doctorow

tags: jesus, separation-of-church-and-state, socialism, socrates 36 likes like

Socrates

“To express oneself badly is not only faulty as far as the language goes, but does some harm to the soul.” 

― Socrates

36 likes like

Socrates

“There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.” 

― Socrates

35 likes like

Socrates

“The misuse of language induces evil in the soul” 

― Socrates

tags: language 35 likes like

Socrates

“The mind is everything; what you think you become” 

― Socrates, The Psychology of Fate & of Free Will

33 likes like

Jostein Gaarder

“Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.” 

― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

tags: socrates 33 likes like

Socrates

“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.” 

― Socrates

tags: principles 33 likes like

Socrates

“Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.” 

― Socrates

30 likes like

s" (showing 121-140 of 533) (0.04 seconds)

Socrates

“All I know is that I do not know anything” 

― Socrates

tags: philosophy-of-life 36 likes like

Socrates

“I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.” 

― Socrates

31 likes like

Karl Popper

“We should realize that, if [Socrates] demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did not mean the learned men; in fact, he was skeptical of all professional learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers or of the learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant was of a different kind. It was simply the realization: how little do I know! Those who did not know this, he taught, knew nothing at all. This is the true scientific spirit.” 

― Karl Popper

30 likes like

Socrates

“For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.” 

― Socrates

tags: inspiration, poet, socrates 30 likes like

Jack Kornfield

“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.” 

― Jack Kornfield

tags: after-the-ecstasy, the-laundry 30 likes like

Socrates

“Do not trouble about those who practice philosophy, whether they are good or bad; but examine the thing itself well and carefully. And if philosophy appears a bad thing to you, turn every man from it, not only your sons; but if it appears to you such as I think it to be, take courage, pursue it, and practice it, as the saying is, 'both you and your house.” 

― Socrates

tags: philosophy, socrates 29 likes like

Socrates

“When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.” 

― Socrates

tags: breath, breathe, breathing, insight, wisdom 28 likes like

Woody Allen

“I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.” 

― Woody Allen, Love and Death

27 likes like

Socrates

“He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who might be better employed.” 

― Socrates

27 likes like

Socrates

“…money and honour have no attraction for them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore necessity must be laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear of punishment. And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonourable. Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself. And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office, not because they would, but because they cannot help — not under the idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves, but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task of ruling to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good. For there is reason to think that if a city were composed entirely of good men, then to avoid office would be as much an object of contention as to obtain office is at present…” 

― Socrates

tags: jowett, plato, republic 26 likes like

Plato

“Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.” 

― Plato, Apology of Socrates: An Interpretation with a New Translation

26 likes like

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“I want first of all... to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact--to borrow from the language of the saints--to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, "May the outward and inward man be one." I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.” 

― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

26 likes like

Roger Ebert

“Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.” 

― Roger Ebert

tags: curiosity 26 likes like

Socrates

“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” 

― Socrates

25 likes like

Mark Waid

“Socrates should have written comics.” 

― Mark Waid

tags: comics, philosophy, socrates 25 likes like

Gustave Flaubert

“I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.” 

― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

tags: religion 24 likes like

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche

23 likes like

Socrates

“Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest 

amount of money and honour and reputation, 

and caring so little about wisdom and 

truth and the greatest improvement of the soul? ” 

― Socrates

23 likes like

Socrates

“I honor and love you: but why do you who are citizens of the great and mighty nation care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor And reputation, and so little amount wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul? Re you not ashamed of these?... I do nothing but go about persuading you all, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by more, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man. ” 

― Socrates

23 likes like

John Gardner

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

― John Gardner

21 likes like

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Results for "socrates" (showing 141-160 of 533) (0.03 seconds)

Sylvia Plath

“I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a Catholic, which ruined it for both of us.” 

― Sylvia Plath

tags: the-bell-jar 21 likes like

Eugène Ionesco

“Tous les chats sont mortels. Socrate est mortel. Donc Socrate est un chat.” 

― Eugène Ionesco, Rhinocéros

21 likes like

E.A. Bucchianeri

“Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? 

Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.

Socrates: How so, Plato?

Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a

sculptor.

Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have

no need to be reminded.

Plato: That is correct.

Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.” 

― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

tags: citizens, civil-liberty, free-country, freedom, freedom-of-thought, gadfly, liberty, philosophers, philosophical, philosophy, plato, socrates, thought-provoking, wisdom, words-of-wisdom 20 likes like

Socrates

“It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.” 

― Socrates

20 likes like

Socrates

“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?” 

― Socrates

tags: greed, philosophy, socrates, truth, wisdom 20 likes like

David Foster Wallace

“The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want.” 

― David Foster Wallace

19 likes like

Daniel Goleman

“A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. The monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout - I can't waste my time with the likes of you!"

His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled "I could kill you for your impertinence."

"That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell."

Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.

"And that,"said the monk "is heaven."

The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates's injunction "Know thyself" speaks to the keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one's own feelings as they occur.”

― Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

18 likes like

Socrates

“May the inward and outward man be as one.” 

― Socrates

17 likes like

Socrates

“One day, the old wise Socrates walks down the streets, when all of the sudden a man runs up to him "Socrates I have to tell you something about your friend who..."

"Hold up" Socrates interrupts him "About the story you're about to tell me, did you put it trough the three sieves?"

"Three sieves?" The man asks "What three sieves?"

"Let's try it" Socrates says.

"The first sieve is the one of truth, did you examine what you were about to tell me if it is true?" Socrates asks.

"Well no, I just overheard it" The man says.

"Ah, well then you have used the second sieve, the sieve of good?" Socrates asks "Is it something good what you're about to tell me?"

"Ehm no, on the contrary" the man answers.

"Hmmm" The wise man says "Let's use the third sieve then, is it necessary to tell me what you're so exited about?"

"No not necessary" the man says.

"Well" Socrates says with a smile "If the story you're about to tell me isn't true, good or necessary, just forget it and don't bother me with it.” 

― Socrates

tags: good, tolerance, truth 16 likes like

Socrates

“As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.” 

― Socrates

16 likes like

Socrates

“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny” 

― Socrates

16 likes like

Plato

“And Agathon said, It is probable, Socrates, that I knew nothing of what I had said.

And yet spoke you beautifully, Agathon, he said.” 

― Plato, The Symposium

16 likes like

Socrates

“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.” 

― Socrates

15 likes like

Socrates

“Be true to thine own self” 

― Socrates

tags: inspirational-life 15 likes like

Roland Barthes

“Love at first sight is a hypnosis: I am fascinated by an image: at first shaken, electrified, stunned, "paralysed" as Menon was by Socrates, the model of loved objects, of captivating images, or again converted by an apparition, nothing distinguishing the path of enamoration from the Road to Damascus; subsequently ensnared, held fast, immobilised, nose stuck to the image (the mirror). In that moment when the other's image comes to ravish me for the first time, I am nothing more than the Jesuit Athanasius Kirchner's wonderful Hen: feet tied, the hen went to sleep with her eyes fixed on the chalk line, which was traced not far from her beak; when she was untied, she remained motionless, fascinated, "submitting to her vanquisher," as the Jesuit says (1646); yet, to waken her from her enchantment, to break off the violence of her Image-repertoire (vehemens animalis imaginatio), it was enough to tap her on the wing; she shook herself and began pecking in the dust again.” 

― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

tags: athanasius-kircher-s-hen, love-at-first-sight, road-to-damascus, vehemens-animalis-imaginato 15 likes like

Marcus Aurelius

“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, Meditations

tags: abstinence, sobriety, socrates 15 likes like

جون ستيوارت ميل

“خير لى أن أكون سقراطا ساخرا , من أن أبقى خنزيرا راضيا” 

― جون ستيوارت ميل, عن الحرية

tags: hidden-god, l-mesary, phlosophy, socrates 15 likes like

Socrates

“Such as thy words are such will thine affections be esteemed and such as thine affections will be thy deeds and such as thy deeds will be thy life ...”

― Socrates

tags: quotes-to-live-by 15 likes like

Socrates

“God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods...” 

― Socrates

tags: god, gods, interpretor, poems, poet 14 likes like

Plato

“Plato asked Socrates what is love...

Socrates: Go into the field and get me the most special leaf...

Plato returned with no leaf at hand

said: I found the most beautiful leaf in the field but I didn't pick it up for I might find a better one, but when I returned to the place, it was gone... 

Socrates: We always look for the best in life. When we finally see it, we take it for granted and expecting a better one... 

NOT KNOWING IT WAS THE BEST AND LAST!!!” 

― Plato

“Why should we place Christ at the top and summit of the human race? Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than Socrates? Was he more patient, more charitable, than Epictetus? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than Epicurus? In what respect was he the superior of Zoroaster? Was he gentler than Lao-tsze, more universal than Confucius? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior to those of Zeno? Did he express grander truths than Cicero? Was his mind subtler than Spinoza’s? Was his brain equal to Kepler’s or Newton’s? Was he grander in death – a sublimer martyr than Bruno? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the equal of Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race?” 

― Robert G. Ingersoll, About The Holy Bible

tags: atheism, baruch-spinoza, bruno, buddha, buddhism, cicero, epictetus, epicurus, gautama-buddha, giordano-bruno, isaac-newton, johannes-kepler, kepler, kindness, laozi, newton, patience, shakespeare, socrates, spinoza, stoicism, william-shakespeare, wisdom, zeno, zeno-of-citium, zoroaster 16 likes like

Roland Barthes

“13084

Tonight I came back to the hotel alone; the other has decided to return later on. The anxieties are already here, like the poison already prepared (jealousy, abandonment, restlessness); they merely wait for a little time to pass in order to be able to declare themselves with some propriety. I pick up a book and take a sleeping pill, "calmly." The silence of this huge hotel is echoing, indifferent, idiotic (faint murmur of draining bathtubs); the furniture and the lamps are stupid; nothing friendly that might warm ("I'm cold, let's go back to Paris). Anxiety mounts; I observe its progress, like Socrates chatting (as I am reading) and feeling the cold of the hemlock rising in his body; I hear it identify itself moving up, like an inexorable figure, against the background of the things that are here.” 

― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

15 likes like

Socrates

“Those who are hardest to love need it the most.” 

― Socrates

tags: love 14 likes like

Norman Cousins

“A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.” 

― Norman Cousins

tags: libraries 13 likes like

Dan Millman

“And where," Socrates smiled, "is the universe?"

"The universe is well, there are theories about how it's shaped..."

"That's not what I asked. Where is it?"

"I don't know - how can I answer that?"

"That is the point. You cannot answer it, and you never will. There is no knowing about it. You are ignorant of where the universe is, and thus, where you are. In fact, you have no knowledge of where anything is or of What anything is or how is came to be. Life is a mystery.

"My ignorance is based on this understanding. Your understanding is based on ignorance. This is why I am a humorous fool, and you are a serious jackass.” 

― Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

tags: humour, ignorance, seriousness, understanding 13 likes like

Socrates

“An unconsidered life is not one worth living.” 

― Socrates

13 likes like

Socrates

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” 

― Socrates

tags: philosophy 13 likes like

Kyōichi Katayama

“A world without you is unknown to me. I don't even know if it exists.” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

13 likes like

“What do you take me for? That fool Socrates, who upheld the law at the cost of his own death – just to be ironic? I suspect that act was actually the result of his secret embarrassment of his hideous nose.” 

― Benson Bruno, A Story That Talks about Talking Is Like Chatter to Chattering Teeth, and Every Set of Dentures Can Attest to the Fact That No..

tags: funny, irony, law, noses, socrates 12 likes like

Socrates

“For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one know whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows that he does not know? And in this respect only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be wiser than they are: that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know...” 

― Socrates

12 likes like

Plato

“The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.” 

― Plato, Apology

tags: apology, plato, socrates 12 likes like

Socrates

“Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.” 

― Socrates

12 likes like

Jarod Kintz

“He was just a kid. He didn’t care. He was like, “I’m getting in my mom’s van and I’m going home.” I was just a kid, too. But I cared. With him gone, who was I going to play Plato and Socrates with?
” 

― Jarod Kintz, This Book Has No Title

tags: child, children, games, kid, philosophy, plato, socrates 12 likes like

Dale Carnegie

“The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?” 

― Dale Carnegie

12 likes like

Socrates

“I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can... And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same... I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.” 

― Socrates

11 likes like

Socrates

“And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.” 

― Socrates

tags: from-plato-s-the-republic 11 likes like

Socrates

“The law presumably says that it is finest to keep as quiet as possible in misfortunes and not be irritated, since the good and bad in such things aren't plain, nor does taking it hard get one anywhere, not are any of the human things worthy of great seriousness.... One must accept the fall of the dice and settle one's affairs accordingly-- in whatever way argument declares would be best. One must not behave like children who have stumbled and who hold on to the hurt place and spend their time in crying out; rather one must always habituate the soul to turn as quickly as possible to curing and setting aright what has fallen and is sick, doing away with lament by medicine.” 

― Socrates

11 likes like

Socrates

“And the same things look bent and straight when seen in water and out of it, and also both concave and convex, due to the sight’s being mislead by the colors, and every sort of confusion of this kind is plainly in our soul. And, then, it is because they take advantage of this affection in our nature that shadow painting, and puppeteering, and many other tricks of the kind fall nothing short of wizardry.” 

― Socrates

11 likes like

Thomas Harris

“One quality in a person doesn't rule out any other quality. They can exist side by side, good and terrible. Socrates said it a lot better.” 

― Thomas Harris

11 likes like

Dorothy Parker

“..."Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but t

hat may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."

-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927” 

― Dorothy Parker, Constant Reader

tags: book-review, william-lyon-phelps 10 likes like

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Socrates

“wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state” 

― Socrates

tags: goodness, wealth 9 likes like

Thomas Moore

“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.” 

― Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

tags: 135 9 likes like

Marguerite Yourcenar

“And nevertheless I have loved certain of my masters, and those strangely intimate though elusive relations existing between student and teacher, and the Sirens singing somewhere within the cracked voice of him who is first to reveal a new idea. The greatest seducer was not Alcibiades, afterall, it was Socrates.” 

― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

8 likes like

Socrates

“Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary?” 

― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates

tags: honesty, truth, truth-telling 8 likes like

Voltaire

“It is the triumph of superior reason to live with folks who don't have any.” 

― Voltaire, Socrates

8 likes like

Socrates

“And a thing is not seen because it is visible, but

conversely, visible because it is seen; nor is a thing led because

it is in the state of being led, or carried because it is in the

state of being carried, but the converse of this. And now I think, Euthyphro, that my meaning will be intelligible; and my

meaning is, that any state of action or passion implies previous

action or passion. It does not become because it is becoming,

but it is in a state of becoming because it becomes; neither

does it suffer because it is in a state of suffering, but it is in a

state of suffering because it suffers. Do you not agree?” 

― Socrates

8 likes like

Robert Nozick

“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.” 

― Robert Nozick, Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations

tags: happiness 8 likes like

“Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization. Socrates made the same point 2,400 years ago: "He is richest who is content with least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.” 

― Christopher Ryan

8 likes like

Socrates

“Conocerse a uno mismo, ese es el principio fundamental de la verdadera sabiduría Humana.” 

― Socrates

8 likes like

Woody Allen

“All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.” 

― Woody Allen

tags: logic, logical-thinking 8 likes like

Socrates

“القناعة هي المصدر الحقيقي لأكبر لذة” 

― Socrates

8 likes like

Jostein Gaarder

“He could very likely have appealed for leniency. At least he could have saved his life by agreeing to leave Athens. But had he done this he would not have been Socrates. He valued his conscience--and the truth-- higher than life.” 

― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

tags: greater-good, life, philosophy, sacrifice, truth, values 8 likes like

Dale Carnegie

“When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: "Try to

bear lightly what needs must be." Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and

resignation that touched the hem of divinity.” 

― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

8 likes like

Socrates

“The answer I gave myself and the oracle was that it was to my advantage to be as I am.” 

― Socrates

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Socrates

“I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them.” 

― Socrates, The Apology

tags: god, thiesm 8 likes like

Socrates

“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.  No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.  And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know.  It is perhaps on this point and in this respect, gentlemen, that I differ from the majority of men, and if I were to claim that I am wiser than anyone in anything, it would be in this, that, as I have no adequate knowledge of things in the underworld, so I do not think I have.  I do know, however, that it is wicked and shameful to do wrong, to disobey one's superior, be he god or man.  I shall never fear or avoid things of which I do not know, whether they may not be good rather than things that I know to be bad.” 

― Socrates

tags: plato-s-apology 7 likes like

Red Phoenix

“A man who lacks honor at the start will become a Master without honor once his sub is collared.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

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Red Phoenix

“Do not censor yourself. Let go of that part of your brain and just be.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, erotic, erotic-romance, erotica, love, love-story, romance 7 likes like

Socrates

“I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium. ...I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried by the help of my senses to apprehend them. And I thought that I had better had recourse to ideas, and seek in them truth in existence. I dare to say that the simile is not perfect--for I am far from admitting that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas, sees them only "through a glass darkly," any more than he who sees them in their working and effects.” 

― Socrates

Peter Kreeft

“Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all.

Bertha: What's that?

Socrates: Philosophy.

Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here. 

Socrates: Where are they?

Bertha: In the philosophy department.

Socrates: Philosophy is not department. 

Bertha: Well, we have philosophers.

Socrates: Are they dangerous?

Bertha: Of course not.

Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers.” 

― Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Jesus: History's Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ

tags: philosophy, seeking, truth-telling 8 likes like

Socrates

“Wisdom is knowing you know nothing” 

― Socrates

tags: wisdom-quote 8 likes like

Socrates

“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” 

― Socrates

6 likes like

Red Phoenix

“I love the smell of a woman. It changes as her level of arousal heightens.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

6 likes like

Red Phoenix

“Socrates smile was devastating. "It's been my honor to introduce you to the woman you were meant to be.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

6 likes like

Alan W. Powers

“Good teachers get fired; great teachers, killed--Socrates, Christ, and Giordano Bruno.” 

― Alan W. Powers

6 likes like

Red Phoenix

“Children bring life to the soul.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, erotic, erotica, love, love-story, romance, romance-love 6 likes like

Socrates

“Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.” 

― Socrates, The Apology

tags: death, excellence, plato, socrates, trial, wealth 6 likes like

E.A. Bucchianeri

“... a man doesn't like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn't know anything.” 

― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

tags: black-humor, dark-humor, ego, egotism, egotist, funny, humorous-quotes, irony, irony-of-life, men, pride, pride-trap, sarcasm, socrates 6 likes like

Clifton Fadiman

“Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain.” 

― Clifton Fadiman

6 likes like

Socrates

“Is there anyone to whom you entrust a greater number of serious matters than your wife? And is there anyone with whom you have fewer conversations?” 

― Socrates

6 likes like

Peter Kreeft

“When I say "The good man gave his good dog a good meal," I use "good" analogically, for there is at the same time a similarity and a difference between a good man, a good dog, and a good meal. All three are desirable, but a good man is wise and moral, a good dog is tame and affectionate, and a good meal is tasty and nourishing. But a good man is not tasty and nourishing, except to a cannibal; a good dog is not wise and moral, except in cartoons, and a good meal is not tame and affectionate, unless it's alive as you eat it.” 

― Peter Kreeft, Socratic Logic 3.1e: Socratic Method Platonic Questions

tags: logic, philosophy, rhetoric 6 likes like

Edward De Bono

“In 80% of Socrates' dialogues there was no constructive outcome. He saw his role as simply pointing out what was "wrong.” 

― Edward De Bono

tags: dialogue, socrates 5 likes like

“

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?

” 

― Socrates (BC 469-BC 399) Greek philosopher of Athens

5 likes like

Red Phoenix

“A Dom intent on developing a relationship will approach you on a personal level first.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, erotic, love-story, romance 5 likes like

Red Phoenix

“Be confident in who you are, Cherry Blossom. Confidence and an understanding of who you are is an alluring combination men won't be able to resist.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, erotic, erotic-romance, erotica, love, love-story, romance, romance-love 5 likes like

Cherrie Lynn

“Wait until you see my socratic method, baby.” 

― Cherrie Lynn, Unleashed

tags: ethan-ross, humor, unleashed 5 likes like

Tom Stoppard

“As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it.” 

― Tom Stoppard

tags: death, existentialism, socrates 5 likes like

Socrates

“Would that the majority could inflict the greatest evils, for they would then be capable of the greatest good, and that would be fine, but now they cannot do either. They cannot make a man either wise or foolish, but they inflict things haphazardly.” 

― Socrates

5 likes like

Plato

“Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise even although I am not wise when they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I am speaking now only to those of you who have condemned me to death. And I have another thing to say to them: You think that I was convicted through deficiency of words - I mean, that if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone, nothing unsaid, I might have gained an acquittal. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words - certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of the manner of my defence, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death, and they, too, go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my award - let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated, - and I think that they are well.” 

― Plato, Apology

5 likes like

Voltaire

“What can be feared when one is doing one's duty? I know the rage of my enemies. I know all their slanders; but when one only tries to do good to men and when one does not offend heaven, one can fear nothing, neither during life nor after death.” 

― Voltaire, Socrates

6 likes like

Socrates

“Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.” 

― Socrates

6 likes like

Ned Vizzini

“Who hasn't thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it? It's an option taken by a lot of successful people: Ernest Hemingway, Socrates, Jesus. Even before high school, I thought that it would be a cool thing to do if I ever got really famous. If I kept making my maps, for instance, and some art collector came across them and decided to make them worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if I killed myself at the height of that, they'd be worth millions of dollars, and I wouldn't be responsible for them anymore. I'd have left behind something that spoke for itself.” 

― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

6 likes like

Red Phoenix

“Socrates bit my neck, sending tingling bursts of fire down my spine. "If a Master can't make you feel this way, turn him loose. You deserve better.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

5 likes like

Red Phoenix

“Fairy tales are dangerous when wolves are on the prowl” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

5 likes like

Kyōichi Katayama

“When you think you have no future, it's strange how pure you can become; but when you find yourself alive, you star to have desires again.” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

5 likes like

“Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong.” 

― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

tags: choice, decision, eve, free-will, genesis, philosophy 5 likes like

Socrates

“The really important thing is not live, but to live well.” 

― Socrates

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Socrates

“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing” 

― Socrates

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Socrates

“I pity those reviewers above, and people like them, who ridicule authors like R.A. Boulay and other proponents of similar Ancient Astronaut theories, simply for putting forth so many interesting questions (because that's really what he often throughout openly admits is all he does does) in light of fascinating and thought-provoking references which are all from copious sources.

Some people will perhaps only read the cover and introduction and dismiss it as soon as any little bit of information flies in the face of their beliefs or normalcy biases. Some of those people, I'm sure, are some of the ones who reviewed this book so negatively without any constructive criticism or plausible rebuttal. It's sad to see how programmed and indoctrinated the vast majority of humanity has become to the ills of dogma, indoctrination, unverified status quos and basic ignorance; not to mention the laziness and conformity that results in such acquiescence and lack of critical thinking or lack of information gathering to confirm or debunk something. Too many people just take what's spoon fed to them all their lives and settle for it unquestioningly. For those people I like to offer a great Einstein quote and one of my personal favorites and that is:

"Condemnation without investigation is the highest form of ignorance"

I found this book to be a very interesting gathering of information and collection of obscure and/or remote antiquated information, i.e. biblical, sacred, mythological and otherwise, that we were not exactly taught to us in bible school, or any other public school for that matter. And I am of the school of thought that has been so for intended purposes.

The author clearly cites all his fascinating sources and cross-references them rather plausibly. He organizes the information in a sequential manner that piques ones interest even as he jumps from one set of information to the next. The information, although eclectic as it spans from different cultures and time periods, interestingly ties together in several respects and it is this synchronicity that makes the information all the more remarkable.

For those of you who continue to seek truth and enlightenment because you understand that an open mind makes for and lifelong pursuit of such things I leave you with these Socrates quotes:

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

― Socrates

tags: socrates 5 likes like

Madeleine L'Engle

“I am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love?” 

― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

tags: children, education 5 likes like

Andrei Pleșu

“În tara noastra, totul e posibil. Mahalaua e eligibila, grotescul e rentabil. Se poate face cariera pe baza de tupeu, minciuna, bîzdîc si fermentatie viscerala. Lumea se distreaza. ‘Baietii rai’ se cauta prin alte cotloane. De pilda, printre intelectuali. Intelectualii sînt o adunatura de profitori, golani, fascisti, fii de nomenclaturisti, pupincuristi, antieuropeni sau, din contra, vînduti strainilor. Acolo e buba! În preajma lui Socrate, care l-a corupt pe Platon, care l-a corupt pe Aristotel, care l-a corupt pe Alexandru cel Mare, care ne-a corupt pe toti.” 

― Andrei Pleșu, Faţă către faţă. Întâlniri şi portrete

4 likes like

“Credit' comes from the Latin 'credere', 'to believe', for credit is the belief that the money you're borrowing will someday be returned, a belief that needs the future to function in.” 

― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

tags: credit 4 likes like

“Let's remember you can still go shopping without buying, because where buying is a matter of need, shopping is a question of want.” 

― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

tags: shopping 4 likes like

Red Phoenix

“I am pleased," he said with a rich throaty accent. My heart melted. Simple as they were, those three little words meant the world to me.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, bdsm-quotes, bdsm-romance, erotic, erotic-romance, erotica, love, love-story, romance 4 likes like

Immanuel Kant

“But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector.” 

― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

tags: religion 4 likes like

Socrates

“The ancient Oracle said that I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.” 

― Socrates

tags: greece, knowledge, prophecy, truth, wisdom 4 likes like

Socrates

“Kehidupan yang tak dipikirkan adalah kehidupan yang tak pantas untuk dijalani” 

― Socrates

4 likes like

Russell Kirk

“I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin.” 

― Russell Kirk

4 likes like

Anne Frasier

“Socrates said the perfect society would be based on a great lie. People would be told that lie from the cradle, and they would believe it, because human beings need to make order out of chaos.” 

― Anne Frasier, Hush

tags: lie, life, religion 4 likes like

6 likes like

Dan Millman

“Today is today. But there are many tomorrows...” 

― Dan Millman, The Journeys of Socrates

5 likes like

Socrates

“The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.” 

― Socrates, The Apology

tags: justice, philosophy, politics 5 likes like

Plato

“Even now I'm well aware that if I allowed myself to listen to him I couldn't resist but would have the same experience again. He makes me admit that, in spite of my great defects, I neglect myself and instead get involved in Athenian politics. So I force myself to block my ears and go away, like someone escaping from the Sirens, to prevent myself sitting there beside him till I grow old.” 

― Plato, The Symposium

tags: alcibiades, plato, socrates, symposium 5 likes like

Kyōichi Katayama

“In spite of all the progress we seem to have made, human emotions stay the same. Deep inside our hearts, we don’t change very much. This poem was written two thousand years ago or more. It’s from a time long before the quatrains and other formal styles you’ve learned in school were established. And yet, even today, we can understand the feelings of people from that time. You don’t need education or scholarship for that. These feelings can be understood by anybody, I think.” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

5 likes like

Lucian

“They see nothing indecent in sexual intercourse, whether heterosexual or homosexual, and indulge in it quite openly, in full view of everyone. The only exception was Socrates, who was always swearing that his relations with young men were purely Platonic, but nobody believed him for a moment, and Hyacinthus and Narcissus gave first-hand evidence to the contrary.” 

― Lucian, Satirical Sketches

tags: platonic-love, satire 4 likes like

N.D. Wilson

“Plato, the first true pope of philosophy (sorry, Socrates), argued for a World of Forms above the reality-a transcendent plane of perfect essences, pure and lovely, where nothing ever gets muddy (including the essence of mud.)” 

― N.D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World

4 likes like

Harold Bloom

“Socrates, in Plato, formulates ideas of order: the Iliad, like Shakespeare, knows that a violent disorder is a great order.” 

― Harold Bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

4 likes like

Peter Kreeft

“The medievals loved to say that God wrote two books: nature and Scripture. And since he is the author of both books, and since this Teacher never contradicts himself, these two books never contradict each other. And since this God who never contradicts himself also gave us the two truth detectors, faith and reason, it follows that faith and reason, properly used, never contradict each other. Therefore, all heresies are contrary to reason. Not all the truths of faith can be proved by reason, but all arguments against the truths of faith can be disproved by reason.” 

― Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Jesus: History's Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ

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Socrates

“Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which, as I am saying, receive the power of the original magnet from one another? The rhapsode like yourself and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet himself is the first of them. Through all these the God sways the souls of men in any direction which he pleases, and makes one man hang down from another. Thus there is a vast chain of dancers and masters and undermasters of choruses, who are suspended, as if from the stone, at the side of the rings which hang down from the Muse. And every poet has some Muse from whom he is suspended, and by whom he is said to be possessed, which is nearly the 

Ion 5

same thing; for he is taken hold of. ” 

― Socrates

4 likes like

Socrates

“Wen das Wort nicht schlägt, den schlägt auch der Stock nicht.” 

― Socrates

tags: language, personality, word 4 likes like

Socrates

“Semper Ubi Sub Ubi” 

― Socrates

4 likes like

Suzanne Lazear

“Miss Gregory took nearly everything. Her clothes. New girls don't have the privilege of wearing their own clothes. Her books. Socrates, Plato, Shakespeare? Much too stimulating. No wonder you have Ideas. Certainly, you don't wish to become a bluestocking!” 

― Suzanne Lazear, Innocent Darkness

4 likes like

Socrates

“Hayat kısa, vazife ağır, fırsatlar geçicidir.” 

― Socrates

4 likes like

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: 'Know thyself!” 

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

tags: evil, good 4 likes like

“Did you hear the story of Socrates? He was a philosopher in ancient Greece, so they killed him.” 

― Troy DeNuthe

4 likes like

Karl Popper

“What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most — that we are all frail human beings.” 

― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

4 likes like

Chris Hedges

“For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge. To train someone to manage an account for Goldman Sachs is to educate him or her in a skill. To train them to debate stoic, existential, theological, and humanist ways of grappling with reality is to educate them in values and morals. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death. Morality is the product of a civilization, but the elites know little of these traditions. They are products of a moral void. They lack clarity about themselves and their culture. They can fathom only their own personal troubles. They do not see their own bases or the causes of their own frustrations. They are blind to the gaping inadequacies in our economic, social, and political structure and do not grasp that these structures, which they have been taught to serve, must be radically modified or even abolished to stave off disaster. They have been rendered mute and ineffectual. “What we cannot speak about” Ludwig Wittgenstein warned “we must pass over in silence.” 

― Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

tags: education, information, intellectual, teaching 4 likes like

Kyōichi Katayama

“Ni siquiera sabía si estaba triste. Junto con las lágrimas, mis emociones se habían ido deslizando hacia alguna parte.” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

4 likes like

Socrates

“How many things can I do without?” 

― Socrates, Momentos

tags: learning, living, writing 4 likes like

Jennifer Michael Hecht

“Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is.” 

― Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson

tags: doubt, philosophy 4 likes like

Epictetus

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own views. It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and of one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others or himself.” 

― Epictetus, The Enchiridion of Epictetus

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Socrates

“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing'.” 

― Socrates, The Apology

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Socrates

“The Only Thing I Know For Sure Is That I Know Nothing At All, For Sure” 

― Socrates

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William A. Dembski

“Johnson is a radical skeptic, insisting, in the best Socratic tradition, that everything be put on the table for examination. By contrast, most skeptics opposed to him are selective skeptics, applying their skepticism to the things they dislike (notably religion) and refusing to apply their skepticism to the things they do like (notably Darwinism). On two occasions I’ve urged Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, to put me on its editorial board as the resident skeptic of Darwinism. Though Shermer and I know each other and are quite friendly, he never got back to me about joining his editorial board.” 

― William A. Dembski

tags: bias, critical-thinking, darwinism, evolution, macro-evolution, macroevolution, religion, scepticism, skepticism 3 likes like

Red Phoenix

“.. any Dom who doesn't promote open communication is not developing a healthy relationship.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, erotic, love, love-story, romance 3 likes like

Red Phoenix

“.. Avoid any Dom with a large ego. Do not mistake arrogance for confidence.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, erotic, erotica, love, love-story, romance 3 likes like

Socrates

“I neither know nor think that I know” 

― Socrates

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Isaac Asimov

“The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong.

The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. 'If I am the wisest man,' said Socrates, 'it is because I alone know that I know nothing.' The implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.

Alas, none of this was new to me. (There is very little that is new to me; I wish my correspondents would realize this.) This particular theme was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who specialized in irritating me. He also told me that all theories are proven wrong in time.

My answer to him was, 'John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.” 

― Isaac Asimov, The Relativity Of Wrong

tags: ancient-greece, earth, flat-earth, greece, ignorance, knowledge, relativity, science, scientific-theory, socrates, theory, understanding, universe, wisdom, wrong 3 likes like

Red Phoenix

“I feel a deep sense of responsibility when I awaken a submissive. I know the imposters who prowl hoping to pounce on the untried.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, bdsm-quotes, bdsm-romance, erotic, erotic-romance, erotica, love, love-story 3 likes like

Jarod Kintz

“Question for your life: If Socrates had a clone, would he advise that clone to know thy self, or to know myself, with myself in this case being himself?” 

― Jarod Kintz, $3.33

tags: advise, clone, clones, knowledge, philosophy, socrates 3 likes like

“Each in His Own Tongue

A fire mist and a planet,

A crystal and a cell,

A jellyfish and a saurian,

And caves where the cave men dwell;

Then a sense of law and beauty,

And a face turned from the clod —

Some call it Evolution,

And others call it God.

A haze on the far horizon,

The infinite, tender sky,

The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields,

And the wild geese sailing high;

And all over upland and lowland

The charm of the goldenrod —

Some of us call it Autumn,

And others call it God.

Like tides on a crescent sea beach,

When the moon is new and thin,

Into our hearts high yearnings

Come welling and surging in;

Come from the mystic ocean,

Whose rim no foot has trod —

Some of us call it Longing,

And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty,

A mother starved for her brood,

Socrates drinking the hemlock,

And Jesus on the rood;

And millions who, humble and nameless,

The straight, hard pathway plod —

Some call it Consecration,

And others call it God.” 

― William Herbert Carruth

tags: poetry-life 3 likes like

Harry Mulisch

“Reality wasn’t a syllogism like “Socrates is a man—all men are mortal—hence Socrates is mortal,” but more like “Helga is a human being—all telephone booths have been vandalized—hence Helga must die.” Or like: “Hitler is a human being—all Jews are animals—hence all Jews must die.” 

― Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven

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Eileen Workman

“Socrates once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." I would expand on his thought by suggesting, "The unexamined society is not worth living in.” 

― Eileen Workman, Sacred Economics

tags: life, philosophy, society 3 likes like

Peter Kreeft

“don’t confuse scepticism as an attitude, or a method, with scepticism as a philosophy. Socrates was sceptical in temperament, and his method was to question everything. But he believed in absolute truth; he was no sceptic.” 

― Peter Kreeft, Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist

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“The associations get only richer and more intense when you realise that the very concept of truth - the cornerstone of philosophy and religion alike, let alone law - also rests heavily on the meaning of waking up. And you don't need a philosopher to appreciate it, because there are clues to its dependency in everyday phrases such as 'waking up to the truth', 'my eyes were opened' and even 'wake up and smell the coffee'. If such phrases hint that waking up and truth are bedfellows of some sort, you need only go back to the ancient Greek for corroboration. There you'll find that the word truth is 'aletheia', from which in English we get the word for 'lethargy'. But see how the Greek word is 'a-letheia' rather than letheia - that is truth is the opposite of lethargy. And what is opposite of lethargy, if not waking up?” 

― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

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Plato

“I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.” 

― Plato, Euthyphro

tags: argument, reasoning 3 likes like

Socrates

“Man's greatest privilege is the discussion of virtue" Socrates in The Apology.” 

― Socrates

tags: apology, dialogues 3 likes like

Christopher Phillips

“Alexandros points to the bronze sculpture of Socrates. "His society didn't collapse because of an outside aggressor. It collapsed from within, from the complete breakdown of communication between citizens, and the breakdown of loving sentiment for one another. They ganged up and got rid of Socrates because he was an uncomfortable reminder of the glory days of ancient Athens, when /demokratia/--'people power'--reigned and citizens worked toward a greater good. He epitomized the fact that you're meant to stay open to all views, to all human experiences, because that's how you deepen your love for people and of wisdom. That amazing man sacrificed his life in the name of classic Athenian values of excellence and honor and compassion, so one day they might live on. And they did, here in America, for more than two centuries. I'm worried my beloved America is becoming as loveless as ancient Athens in its days of decline.” 

― Christopher Phillips, Socrates in Love: Philosophy for a Passionate Heart

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“An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure.” 

― Mark Van Doren

Mark Twain

“Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on 'The Survival of the Fittest.' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.” 

― Mark Twain

tags: baron-georges-cuvier, biology, charles-darwin, cuvier, darwin, evolution, georges-cuvier, law, might, names, natural-selection, policy, science, socrates, survival-of-the-fittest 5 likes like

“But there is some connection between critically distancing oneself from prevailing popular opinion and a level of moral conscientiousness that comes to more than obeying the voice of "the Anyone." Crucial to genuine moral conscience is the refusal to lose oneself in the anonymity of what "the Anyone" dictates, a willingness to take one's stand aqainst what is fashionable, to criticize public opinion for the sake of the community, to judge what is right beyond the horizon of the taken-for-granted. That one think for oneself, of course, is no guarantee that one's judgement will be wise. If not thinking can lead to great evil, it does not follow that thinking can prevent it. But at least the habit of critical reflection puts an obstacle in the way of banal evil, for the thoughtful individual may have afterthoughts about saying or doing what he cannot account for. Moral conscience, Arendt contends, is a 'side-effect' of the thinking ego, of the self who would, like Socrates, prefer that 'the multitudes disagree with me than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with and contradict myself.” 

― Lawrence Vogel, The Fragile We: Ethical Implications Of Heidegger's "Being and Time"

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Jeanette Winterson

“Bigger questions, questions with more than one answer, questions without an answer are the hardest to cope with in silence. Once asked they do not evaporate and leave the mind to its serener musings. Once asked they gain dimension and texture, trip you on the stairs, wake you at night-time. A black hole sucks up its surroundings and even light never escapes. Better then to ask no questions? Better then to be a contented pig than an unhappy Socrates? Since factory farming is tougher on pigs than it is on philosophers I'll take a chance.” 

― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

tags: happiness, philosophy, questions 4 likes like

Kyōichi Katayama

“Eso es porque Aki se ha ido. Porque la he perdido. Ya no hay nada que desee ver. Ni en Australia, ni en Alaska, ni en el Mediterráneo, ni en la Antártida. En este mundo, vaya a dónde vaya, siempre me sucederá lo mismo. Por más maravilloso que sea el paisaje que tenga ante los ojos, nunca me emocionaré; la más hermosa de las vistas no me gustará. Ha desaparecido la persona que me hacía desear ver, saber y sentir…, incluso vivir. Ella ya no volverá a estar jamás a mi lado.” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

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Kyōichi Katayama

“Una vida solitaria se hace larga y tediosa. Sin embargo, cuando la compartes con la persona amada, en un santiamén llegas a la bifurcación donde tienes que decirte adiós” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

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Socrates

“Nosce te ipsum” 

― Socrates

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Joseph Heller

“There are outrages and there are outrages, and some are more outrageous than others.

Mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.

The Death of Socrates had no effect upon the history of Athens. If anything, the reputation of the city has been improved by it.

The death of no person is as important to the future as the literature about it.

You will learn nothing from history that can be applied, so don't kid yourself into thinking you can.

'History is bunk', said Henry Ford.” 

― Joseph Heller, Picture This

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R. Alan Woods

“Wisdom may begin in wonder, however, it inevitability ends in righteousness (Socrates)."

~R. Alan Woods [2013]” 

― R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries

tags: r-alan-woods, righteousness, socrates, wisdom, wonders 3 likes like

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Dionysus had already been scared form the tragic stage, by a demonic power speaking through Euripides. Even Euripides was, in a sense, only a mask: the deity that spoke through him was neither Dionysus nor Apollo, but an altogether newborn demon, called Socrates.” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy/The Case of Wagner

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“But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart.” 

― William Lyon Phelps

tags: books 3 likes like

“We all know that the un-examined life is not worth living (socrates). But if all you are doing is examining, you are not living.” 

― Adam Leipzig

tags: inspirational, living 3 likes like

Socrates

“I know that I know nothing.” 

― Socrates

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Karl Jaspers

“The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student and teacher here is not one of submission, but of a contest for truth.” 

― Karl Jaspers, The Idea of the University

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Plato

“for philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life.” 

― Plato, Gorgias

tags: philosophy 3 likes like

Christopher Phillips

“one could not attain greater personal excellence without also paving the way for everyone else in society to attain it as well.” 

― Christopher Phillips, Socrates in Love: Philosophy for a Passionate Heart

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Though it may be the peculiar happiness of Socrates and other geniuses of his stamp, to reason themselves into virtue, the human species would long ago have ceased to exist, had it depended entirely for its preservation on the reasonings of the individuals that compose it." Par 1, 36” 

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes

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Ray Bradbury

“Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.” 

― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

tags: gardening, life-and-living 3 likes like

“La historia no ha cambiado. Hace mil anos ellos eran los duenos del mundo. Hoy en dia lo siguen siendo. Claro, lo tienen que compartir con los grandes magnates de la tierra, esos que controlan el petroleo, las drogas, la tecnologia y por supuesto la television y la radio. La Iglesia domina los miedos y la promesa de la salvacion; las grandes empresas tambien manipulan los miedos y los paliativos para estos: la satisfaccion de las necesidades basicas - y las no tan basicas que hoy en dia parecen primordiales: carro, casa, belleza y entretenimiento - , una via directa al consimismo. Ambos en busca de lo mismo, la minipulacion del pueblo que los lleva a la gallina de los huevos de oro: el dinero de las masas. No es causalidad que la gente no quiera pensar. La Iglesia se encargo por siglos de esto, evitando la lectura de cualquier cosa que no fuese su religion. Desde Aristoteles, Ovidio, Pitagoras, Platon, Socrates, Antistenes, Heraclito, hasta Voltaire, Huxley, Hesse, Sade, Maquiavelo, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Dumas, entre otros, fueron censurados.” 

― Antonio Guadarrama, Coatl, El Misterio de La Serpiente

tags: censorship, consumerism, corporations, dominance, religion 3 likes like

Socrates

“The unexamined life is not worth living” 

― Socrates

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Thomas Henry Huxley

“Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic position, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow. The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction.

That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.” 

― Thomas Henry Huxley, Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays

tags: agnostic, agnosticism, belief, definition, descartes, honesty, knowledge, science, socrates, truth 2 likes like

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood." -Is it so bad, then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood...” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

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John Barth

“How come you write the way you do?” an apprentice writer in my Johns Hopkins workshop once disingenuously asked Donald Barthelme, who was visiting. Without missing a beat, Don replied, “Because Samuel Beckett was already writing the way he does.”

Asked another, smiling but serious, “How can we become better writers than we are?”

“Well," DB advised, “for starters, read through the whole history of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics up through last semester. That might help.”

“But Coach Barth has already advised us to read all of literature, from Gilgamesh up through last semester...”

“That, too,” Donald affirmed, and twinkled that shrewd Amish-farmer-from-West-11th-Street twinkle of his. “You’re probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics and a few other things. The history of everything.” 

― John Barth, Further Fridays: Essays, Lectures, and Other Nonfiction, 1984 - 1994

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Constantin Noica

“Filozofia nu e posibilă decît în oraş, printre oameni, pe pieţele acelea de care nu se dezlipea Socrate. Singură întîlnirea cu celălalt ţi-o dă. Puneţi etaje peste etaje, suprimaţi grădinile (sau lăsaţi cel mult aceste convenţionale grădini publice) — şi undeva, lîngă o scară de serviciu, se va naşte un filozof.” 

― Constantin Noica, Jurnal filozofic

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Plato

“["F]or it's not possible," [Socrates] said, "for anybody to experience a greater evil than hating arguments. Hatred of arguments and hatred of human beings come about in the same way. For hatred of human beings arises from artlessly trusting somebody to excess, and believing that human being to be in every way true and sound and trustworthy, and then a little later discovering that this person is wicked and untrustworthy - and then having this experience again with another. And whenever somebody experiences this many times, and especially at the hands of just those he might regard as his most intimate friends and comrades, he then ends up taking offense all the time and hates all human beings and believes there's nothing at all sound in anybody.” 

― Plato, Phaedo

tags: evil, evils, hate, hurt, trusted 3 likes like

Peter B. Lockhart

“Socrates put it perfectly in financial matters at least: “The majority is always wrong.” 

― Peter B. Lockhart, The Naked Emperor: Why Religion is Bollocks

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“Getting ready is that point in the day when the rivalry between the two needs is likely to peak, because we are making transition from being at home and pleasing ourselves (ego) to going out and having to conform to a series of norms an conventions (superego). We become less ego and more superego with each button we fasten” 

― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

tags: clothes, freud 3 likes like

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Socrate considérait que c'est un mal qui n'est pas loin de la folie, de s'imaginer que l'on possède une vertu, alors qu'on ne la possède pas. Certes, une pareille illusion est plus dangereuse que l'illusion contraire qui consiste à croire que l'on souffre d'un défaut, d'un vice.

Deuxième Considération intempestive, ch. 6” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche

tags: insanity, vice, virtue 3 likes like

Emil Cioran

“While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning how to play a new tune on the flute. “What will be the use of that?” he was asked. “To know this tune before dying.” If I dare repeat this reply long since trivialized by the handbooks, it is because it seems to me the sole serious justification of any desire to know, whether exercised on the brink of death or at any other moment of existence.” 

― Emil Cioran, Drawn and Quartered

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Socrates

“It is only in death that we are truly cured of the 'sickness' of life.” 

― Socrates

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Stanisław Lem

“Mi chiedo se Averroè, Kant, Socrate, Newton, Voltaire avrebbero mai creduto che nel Ventesimo secolo la piaga delle città, l'avvelenatore dei polmoni, l'omicida di massa, l'oggetto di culto sarebbe diventato un carrello di lamiera con le ruote e che le persone avrebbero preferito morire schiantate al suo interno durante gli esodi di massa per i fine settimana, anzichè restarsene tranquillamente a casa.” 

― Stanisław Lem, The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy

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Kyōichi Katayama

“A life lived alone simply feels long and boring. But a life shared with someone you love reaches the place of parting in no time at all.” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

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Katie  King

“There are also generational knowledges in play, accessed and skilled within a history of televisual experiments in educational entertainment. For US academics schooled in the fifties, sixties, and seventies some old TV shows haunt this vignette as well. Two are Walter Cronkite’s You Are There (CBS, 1953–57) and Steve Allen’s Meeting of Minds (PBS, 1977–81). During the mid-century decades either or both could be found on the TV screen and in US secondary school classrooms. Even now the thoughtfully presentist You are There reenactments can be viewed on DVDs from Netflix; you can be personally addressed and included as Cronkite interviews Socrates about his choice to poison himself with hemlock rather than submit to exile after ostracism in ancient Athens. Cronkite’s interviews, scripted by blacklisted Hollywood writers, were specifically charged with messages against McCarthy-style witch hunts that were “felt” rather than spoken out.” 

― Katie King, Networked Reenactments: Stories Transdisciplinary Knowledges Tell

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Socrates

“تكلم حتي أراك” 

― Socrates

2 likes like

“The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.” 

― Socrates Litsios

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Red Phoenix

“Socrates held up his hands, wiggling his fingers. "God gave me these hands to change the world, one child at a time.” 

― Red Phoenix, Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom

tags: bdsm, bdsm-romance, erotic, erotic-romance, erotica, love, love-story 2 likes like

“But Socrates did not did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given.” 

― Mara Bar-Serapion

2 likes like

“Through my questions, you will learn to teach yourselves.” 

― John Jay Osborn Jr., The Paper Chase

tags: education, questioning, socratic 2 likes like

William Gaddis

“--Here, my good man. Could you tell me whereabouts Horatio Street...good heavens.

Thus called upon, he took courage; the sursum corda of an extravagant belch straightened him upright, and he answered, --Whfffck? Whether this was an approach to discussion he had devised himself, or a subtle adaptation of the Socratic method of questioning perfected in the local athenaeums which he attended until closing time, was not to be known; for the answer was,

--Stand aside.” 

― William Gaddis, The Recognitions

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Socrates

“I know I'm intelligent because I know that I know nothing.” 

3 likes like

“Clothes exist to hide the pubic from the public and therefore make you socially acceptable. The irony is that, precisely because they are a prerequisite for social inclusion, wearing clothes has become almost more natural than being naked ... To that established irony, we can add a more subtle one. As anyone who has been on a date well knows, clothes aren't just about covering you up: while you need them to hide your sex, you want them to show your sexuality.” 

― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

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“The Greeks were so committed to ideas as supernatural forces that they created an entire group of goddesses (not one but nine) to represent creative power; the opening lines of both The Iliad and The Odyssey begin with calls to them. These nine goddesses, or muses, were the recipients of prayers from writers, engineers, and musicians. Even the great minds of the time, like Socrates and Plato, built shrines and visited temples dedicated to their particular muse (or muses, for those who hedged their bets). Right now, under our very secular noses, we honor these beliefs in our language, as the etymology of words like museum ("place of the muses") and music ("art of the muses") come from the Greek heritage of ideas as superhuman forces.” 

― Scott Berkun, The Myths of Innovation

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“Socrates had it backward. He thought the unexamined life is not worth living. I think no one's life holds up to examination. The more time you spend thinking the more you notice that everyone else is doing something better or more important than you.” 

― David R. Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution

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“CREATION

The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

— Cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p.475

Norman COUSINS (1915- )” 

― Cousins, The Spirit in the South: Stories of Our Grandmothers' Spirit

tags: libraries 2 likes like

Mary Ann Shaffer

“But you want to know about the influence of books on my life, and as I’ve said, there was only one. Seneca. Do you know who he was? He was a Roman philosopher who wrote letters to imaginary friends

telling them how to behave for the rest of their lives.. Maybe that sounds dull, but the letters aren’t – they’re witty. I think you learn more if you’re laughing at the same time.” 

― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

tags: humorous, socrates 2 likes like

Socrates

“.. is there not one true coin for which all things ought to exchange?- and that is wisdom; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly bought or sold, whether courage, temperance or justice. And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may not attend her? But the virtue which is made up of these goods, when they are severed from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow of virtue only, nor is there any freedom or health or truth in her; but in the true exchange there is a purging away of all these things, and temperance, and justice, and courage, and wisdom herself, are a purgation of them.” 

― Socrates

tags: plato, socrates, virtue, wisdom 2 likes like

Tom  Barton

“Jesus would be another wise man or philosopher like Socrates if it were not for three words. With the declaration of these words the message of the good news of Jesus Christ changed from "fanatical audacity", to the fantastic reality of a reconciled relationship and eternal hope. "HE IS RISEN!” 

― Tom Barton, The Bible Its Text and Background

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Nicholas Shakespeare

“Tell me. You're a man who understands history," I said. "If you want to start a revolution, why not issue a manifesto? Why not show the people who you are, what you're doing?"

He leaned back, grateful to explain. "That's perfectly understandable. Socrates wrote nothing down. Neither did Jesus. The problem with text is that it assumes it's own reality. It cannot answer, and it cannot explain.” 

― Nicholas Shakespeare, The Dancer Upstairs

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Don Marquis

“How often when they find a sage 

As sweet as Socrates or Plato

They hand him hemlock for his wage

Or bake him like a sweet potato!-Taking the Longer View” 

― Don Marquis

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Voltaire

“Always beware of turning religion into metaphysics: Morality is its essence.” 

― Voltaire, Socrates

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“Who, I ask, ever found salvation through the conquests of Alexander? What city was ever more wisely governed because of them, what individual improved? Many indeed you might find whom those conquests enriched, but not one whom they made wiser or more temperate than he was by nature, if indeed they have not made him more insolent and arrogant. Whereas all who now find their salvation in philosophy owe it to Socrates.” 

― Flavius Claudius Julianus

tags: philosophy, politics 2 likes like

Jonathan Swift

“So impossible it is for a man who looks no further than the present world to fix himself long in a contemplation where the present world has no part; he has no sure hold, no firm footing; he can never expect to remove the earth he rests upon while he has no support besides for his feet, but wants, like Archimedes, some other place whereon to stand. To talk of bearing pain and grief without any sort of present or future hope cannot be purely greatness of spirit; there must be a mixture in it of affectation and an alloy of pride, or perhaps is wholly counterfeit.

It is true there has been all along in the world a notion of rewards and punishments in another life, but it seems to have rather served as an entertainment to poets or as a terror of children than a settled principle by which men pretended to govern any of their actions. The last celebrated words of Socrates, a little before his death, do not seem to reckon or build much upon any such opinion; and Caesar made no scruple to disown it and ridicule it in open senate.” 

― Jonathan Swift, Three Sermons, Three Prayers

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Jostein Gaarder

“It is extraordinary to think about. We still speak of Socratic or Platonic philosophy, but actually being Plato or Socrates is quite another matter.”

― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

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“Given that Socrates was effectively assassinated by poison, you might think twice before accepting his invitation to breakfast.” 

― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

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“Confronted with the choice between having time and having things, we’ve chosen to have things. Today it is a luxury to read what Socrates said, not because the books are expensive, but because our time is scarce.” 

― Gabriel Zaid, So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance

tags: reading, time 2 likes like

Plato

“Socrates: This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I – equally ignorant – do not believe [that I know anything].” 

― Plato, Apology

tags: knowledge, philosophy 2 likes like

Epictetus

“That Socrates should ever have been so treated by the Athenians!"

Slave! why say "Socrates"? Speak of the thing as it is: That ever then the poor body of Socrates should have been dragged away and haled by main force to prision! That ever hemlock should have been given to the body of Socrates; that that should have breathed its life away!—Do you marvel at this? Do you hold this unjust? Is it for this that you accuse God? Had Socrates no compensation for this? Where then for him was the ideal Good? Whom shall we hearken to, you or him? And what says he? 

"Anytus and Melitus may put me to death: to injure me is beyond their power." 

And again:— 

"If such be the will of God, so let it be.” 

― Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

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Ray Bradbury

“And Quell asked, 'Ah, but what is nature?'

Socrates answered, sparks showering, 'God surprising himself with odd miracles of flesh.” 

― Ray Bradbury, Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99

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Socrates

“And in knowing that you know nothing makes you the smartest of all.” 

― Socrates

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― Socrates

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Simon Gray

“Philosophers have a long tradition of marrying stupid women, from Socrates on. They think it clever.” 

― Simon Gray, Otherwise Engaged

tags: marriage 1 likes like

Socrates

“Do you feel no compunction, Socrates, at having followed a line of action which puts you in danger of the death penalty?'

I might fairly reply to him, 'You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action--that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one.” 

― Socrates, The Apology

tags: ethics-and-moral-philosophy, right-and-wrong-in-philosophy 3 likes like

John Nicholas Gray

“Tragedy is born of myth, not morality. Prometheus and Icarus are tragic heroes. Yet none of the myths in which they appear has anything to do with moral dilemmas. Nor have the greatest Greek tragedies. 

If Euripides is the most tragic of the Greek playwrights, it is not because he deals with moral conflicts but because he understood that reason cannot be the guide of life.” 

― John Nicholas Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

tags: euripides, greek-mythology, morality, socrates, the-death-of-tragedy, tragedy 3 likes like

John Green

“In another 2,400 years, even Socrates, the most well-known genius of the century, might be forgotten. The future will erase everything--there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible.” 

― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

tags: future, realizations 3 likes like

Kyōichi Katayama

“De pronto, tuve una horrible certeza. Por más tiempo que viviera, jamás podría esperar una felicidad mayor que la que sentía en aquel momento. Lo único que podía hacer era intentar conservarla para siempre. Me horrorizó la felicidad que sentía. Si la porción de dicha que corresponde a cada uno estaba fijada de antemano, en aquellos instantes quizá estuviera agotando la parte que a mí me correspondía para mi vida entera, Y, algún día, los mensajeros de la luna me arrebatarían a mi princesa. Entonces sólo me quedaría un tiempo tan largo como la vida eterna.” 

― Kyōichi Katayama, Socrates In Love

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Timothy Ferriss

“Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued. —Socrates” 

― Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman

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Socrates

“I will not yield to any man contrary to what is right, for fear of death, even if I should die at once for not yielding.” 

― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates

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Socrates

“The definition of terms is the beginning of wisdom.” 

― Socrates

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“A good talker is sensitive to expression, to tone and color and inflection in human speech. Because he himself is articulate, he can help others to articulate their half-formulated feelings. His mind fills in the gaps, and he becomes, in Socrates’ words, a kind of midwife for ideas that are struggling to be born.” 

― Sydney J. Harris

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Socrates

“We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life. For what do we, who love truth, strive after in life? To free ourselves from the body, and from all the evil that is caused by the life of the body! If so, then how can we fail to be glad when death comes to us?

The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not terrible to him.” 

― Socrates

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Socrates

“I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.” 

― Socrates

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Russell Kirk

“[A] people needs to understand what freedom is. We Americans are fortunate that the Founders and their generation possessed that understanding. They knew that freedom, per se, is not enough. They knew that freedom must be limited to be preserved. This paradox is difficult for many students to grasp. Young people generally think freedom means authority figures leaving them alone so they can "do their own thing." That's part of what it means to be free, but true freedom involves much, much more. As understood by our Founders and by the best minds of the young republic, true freedom is always conditioned by morality. John Adams wrote, "I would define liberty as a power to do as we would be done by." In other words, freedom is not the power to do what one can, but what one ought. Duty always accompanies liberty. Tocqueville similarly observed, "No free communities ever existed without morals." The best minds concur: there must be borders: freedom must be limited to be preserved.

What kinds of limits are we talking about?

* The moral limits of right and wrong, which we did not invent but owe largely to our Judeo-Christian heritage.

* Intellectual limits imposed by sound reasoning. Again, we did not invent these but are in debt largely to Greco-Roman civilization, from the pre-Socratic philosophers forward.

* Political limits such as the rule of law, inalienable rights, and representative institutions, which we inherited primarily from the British.

* Legal limits of the natural and common law, which we also owe to our Western heritage.

* Certain social limits, which are extremely important to the survival of freedom. These are the habits of our hearts--good manners, kindness, decency, and willingness to put others first, among other things--which are learned in our homes and places of worship, at school and in team sports, and in other social settings.

All these limits complement each other and make a good society possible. But they cannot be taken for granted. It takes intellectual and moral leadership to make the case that such limits are important. Our Founders did that. To an exceptional degree, their words tutored succeeding generations in the ways of liberty. It is to America's everlasting credit that our Founders got freedom right.” 

― Russell Kirk, American Cause

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Victor Hugo

“How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation? The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things; in that inexhaustible whole, from the sun to the grub, nothing despise the other; all have need of each other. The light does not bear away terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. All birds that fly have round their the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting forth of a meteor and with the peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where telescopes end, the microscopes begin. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant hill of stars.” 

― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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Jostein Gaarder

“Socrates (770-399 B.C.[E.]) is possibly the most enigmatic figure in the entire history of philosophy. He never wrote a single line. Yet he is one of the philosophers who has had the greatest influence on European thought, not least because of the dramatic manner of his death.” 

― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

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Jostein Gaarder

“It is Plato's portrait of Socrates that has inspired thinkers in the Western world for nearly 2.500 years.” 

― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

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Jostein Gaarder

“As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil.” 

― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

tags: cicero, philosophy, socrate 2 likes like

Jostein Gaarder

“Socrates himself said, "one thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” 

― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

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“Socrates taught that

No evil could come

To a good man.

How does that help me?” 

― Evan Rhys, Poems from the Ledge

tags: good-vs-evil, sinners, socrates 2 likes like

Plato

“To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know. No man knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest blessing for a human being; and yet people fear it as if they knew for certain that is is the greatest of evil." (Socrates in The Apology)” 

― Plato

tags: death, plato, wisdom 2 likes like

Benjamin Franklin

“Imitate Jesus and Socrates” 

― Benjamin Franklin

tags: humility, love, reason 2 likes like

Bertrand Russell

“There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment...

... There are other things of less importance. There is the instance of the Gadarene swine where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put devils into them and make them rush down the hill to the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but he chooses to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree. 'He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time for figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,"...and Peter... saith unto Him: "Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away".' This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in matter of wisdom or in matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects.” 

― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

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Milan Kundera

“Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone by displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: 'I see your vanity through the hole in your mantle.' Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty.” 

― Milan Kundera, Farewell Waltz

tags: vanity 3 likes like

Socrates

“My plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a

proof that I am speaking the truth.” 

― Socrates, The Apology

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Socrates

“Neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.” 

― Socrates, The Apology

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C.S. Lewis

“It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.” 

― C.S. Lewis

tags: philosophical, philosophy 2 likes like

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays

tags: copernicus, galileo, genius, greatness, jesus, luther, misunderstood 2 likes like

Arthur Schopenhauer

“Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.” 

― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

tags: death 2 likes like

“And that’s the terrible myth of organized society. That everything that’s done through the established system is legal. And that word has a powerful psychological impact. It makes people believe that there is an order to life and an order to a system. And that a person who goes through this order and is convicted has gotten all that is due him and therefore society can turn its conscious off and look to other things and other times. And that’s the terrible thing about these past trials that they have this aura of legitimacy an aura of legality. I suspect that better men than the world has known and more of them have gone to their deaths through a legal system then through all the illegalities in the history of man. Six million people in Europe during the Third Reich, legal, Sacco and Vanzetti, quite legal, the Haymarket defendants, legal, the hundreds of rape trials throughout the south where black men were condemned to death all legal, Jesus legal, Socrates legal and that is the kaleidoscopic nature of what we live through here and in other places because all tyrants learn that it is far better to do this thing through some semblance of legality than to do it without that pretext.” 

― William M. Kunstler

tags: condemned, disturbing-the-universe, legal, myth, society, tyranny 2 likes like

Socrates

“the great honor in the world is to be what we pretend to be” 

― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates

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Socrates

“It is a base thing for a man to wax old in careless self-neglect before he has lifted up his eyes and seen what manner of man he was made to be, in the full perfection of bodily strength and beauty. But these glories are withheld from him who is guilty of self-neglect, for they are not wont to blaze forth unbidden.” 

― Socrates

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Plato

“SOCRATES: Perhaps we may be wrong; if so, you in your wisdom should convince us that we are mistaken in preferring justice to injustice.

THRASYMACHUS: And how am I to convince you, he said, if you are not already convinced by what I have just said; what more can I do for you? Would you have me put the proof bodily into your souls?” 

― Plato, The Republic

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“Socrates said that a man doesn’t want what he doesn’t think he lacks. That is, if you believe you have the truth then why would you seek another truth?” 

― Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists

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Plato

“I prefer nothing, unless it is true.” 

― Plato, Euthyphro

tags: socrates 2 likes like

“Donald Saari uses a combination of stories and questions to challenge students to think critically about calculus. “When I finish this process,” he explained, “I want the students to feel like they have invented calculus and that only some accident of birth kept them from beating Newton to the punch.” In essence, he provokes them into inventing ways to find the area under the curve, breaking the process into the smallest concepts (not steps) and raising the questions that will Socratically pull them through the most difficult moments. Unlike so many in his discipline, he does not simply perform calculus in front of the students; rather, he raises the questions that will help them reason through the process, to see the nature of the questions and to think about how to answer them. “I want my students to construct their own understanding,” he explains, “so they can tell a story about how to solve the problem.” 

― Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do

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Jacques Derrida

“I would like to write you so simply, so simply, so simply. Without having anything ever catch the eye, excepting yours alone, ... so that above all the language remains self-evidently secret, as if it were being invented at every step, and as if it were burning immediately” 

― Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond

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Socrates

“What I do not know, I do not think I know.” 

― Socrates

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Socrates

“Beloved Pan and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the outward and the inner man be at one.” 

― Socrates

tags: balanced-life 2 likes like

John Green

“If the future is forever, he thought, then eventually it will swallow us all up. Even Colin could only name a handful of people who lived, say, 2,400 years ago. In another 2,400 years, even Socrates, the most well-known genius of that century, might be forgotten. The future will erase everything - there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible. But there's another way. There are stories.” 

― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

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Fulton J. Sheen

“Not only were the Jews expecting the birth of a Great King, a Wise Man and a Saviour, but Plato and Socrates also spoke of the Logos and of the Universal Wise Man 'yet to come'. Confucius spoke of 'the Saint'; the Sibyls, of a 'Universal King'; the Greek dramatist, of a saviour and redeemer to unloose man from the 'primal eldest curse'. All these were on the Gentile side of the expectation. What separates Christ from all men is that first He was expected; even the Gentiles had a longing for a deliverer, or redeemer. This fact alone distinguishes Him from all other religious leaders.” 

― Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ

tags: god, jesus-christ, prophecy, the-messiah 1 likes like

Socrates

“Thus such another will not easily come to you, men, but if you believe me, you will spare me; but perhaps you might possibly be offended, like the sleeping who are awakened, striking me, believing Anytus, you might easily kill, then the rest of your lives you might continue sleeping, unless the god caring for you should send you another.” 

― Socrates

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Jennifer Michael Hecht

“Lucian [of Samosata; 120-190 CE] was trying to make his audience laugh, rather than start a revolution” 

― Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson

tags: laughter 1 likes like