Socrates (469/470-399 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and is considered the father of western philosophy. He is generally regarded as one of the wisest people of all time!
Little is known of his life. He left no writings, and most of our knowledge comes from the dialogues of his most famous student, Plato and from the memoirs of Xenophon.
Socrates is described as having neglected his own affairs, instead spending his time discussing virtue, justice, and piety wherever his fellow citizens congregated, seeking wisdom about right conduct so that he might guide the moral and intellectual improvement of Athens.
Using a method now known as the Socratic dialogue, or dialectic, he drew forth knowledge from his students by pursuing a series of questions and examining the implications of their answers.
However, he left vast knowledge behind his tragic “suicidal” death. Let us remember his endless wisdom by reading 24 famous quotes from one of the wisest man who ever lived:
1. “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
2. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
3. “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
4. “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
5. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
6. “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
7. “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.”
8. “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
9. “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.”
10. “Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
11. “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
12. “To find yourself, think for yourself.”
13. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
14. “Know thyself.”
15. “Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
16. “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
17. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
18. “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”
19. “Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
20. “understanding a question is half an answer”
21. “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us”
22. “He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”
23. “To be is to do”
24. “The mind is everything; what you think you become”
Originally inspired by Thinking Humanity
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