Socrates [Σωκράτης] (c.470 BC - 399 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who is widely credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy.

Sourced

Socrates left no writings of his own, thus our awareness of his teachings comes primarily from a few ancient authors who referred to him in their own works.

Plato

The words of Socrates, as quoted or portrayed in Plato's works, which are the most extensive source available for our present knowledge about his ideas.

• By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful. For this appears to me the safest answer to give both to myself and others; and adhering to this, I think that I shall never fall, but that it is a safe answer both for me and any one else to give — that by means of beauty beautiful things become beautiful.
  • Phædo

• False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
  • Phædo 91

• In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.
  • Phaedrus

• Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.
  • Socrates' prayer, Phaedrus, 279

• Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding?
  • Crito

• As for me, all I know is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.
  • Republic, 354b, (conclusion of book I)

Apology

Plato's famous account of the trial and death of Socrates.

• When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
  • Apology, 21d

• And how is not this the most reprehensible ignorance, to think that one knows what one does not know? But I, O Athenians! in this, perhaps, differ from most men; and if I should say that I am in any thing wiser than another, it would be in this, that not having a competent knowledge of the things in Hades, I also think that I have not such knowledge.
  • Apology, 29b

• The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. (ho de anexetastos bios ou biôtos anthrôpôi — ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ)
  • Apology, 38a
    • Variant translations: More closely 'The unexamining life is not worth living for a human being' The life which is unexamined is not worth living. An unexamined life is not worth living. The unexamined life is not the life for man.

• I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.
  • Apology, 30a-b

• I realized that it was not by wisdom that poets write their poetry, but by a kind of nature or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets; for these also say many beautiful things, but do not know anything of what they say.
  • Apology, 22c

• Now answer me this. Do you think that the same holds of horses? Do people in general improve them, whereas one particular person corrupts them or makes them worse? Or is it wholly the opposite: one particular person - or the very few who are horse trainers - is able to improve them, whereas the majority of people, if they have to do with horses and make use of them, make them worse? Isn't that true, Meletus, both of horses and of all other animals? Of course it is, whether you and Anytus say so or not. Indeed, our young people are surely in a very happy situation if only one person corrupts them, whereas all the rest benefit them.
  • Apology, 25b

• So now, Athenian men, more than on my own behalf must I defend myself, as some may think, but on your behalf, so that you may not make a mistake concerning the gift of god by condemning me. For if you kill me, you will not easily find another such person at all, even if to say in a ludicrous way, attached on the city by the god, like on a large and well-bred horse, by its size and laziness both needing arousing by some gadfly; in this way the god seems to have fastened me on the city, some such one who arousing and persuading and reproaching each one of you I do not stop the whole day settling down all over. 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.
  • Apology, 30e

• The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.
  • Apology, 42a

Last words

• Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

Xenophon

Words of Socrates as quoted by Xenophon

• You will know that the divine is so great and of such a nature that it sees and hears everything at once, is present everywhere, and is concerned with everything.
  • Memorabilia I. 4.18

• If I am to live longer, perhaps I must live out my old age, seeing and hearing less, understanding worse, coming to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful, and growing worse than those to whom I was once superior. Indeed, life would be unliveable, even if I did not notice the change. And if I see the change, how could life not be even more wretched and unpleasant?
  • Memorabilia IV. 8.8

• Really, Ischomachus, I am disposed to ask: "Does teaching consist in putting questions?" Indeed, the secret of your system has just this instant dawned upon me. I seem to see the principle in which you put your questions. You lead me through the field of my own knowledge, and then by pointing out analogies to what I know, persuade me that I really know some things which hitherto, as I believed, I had no knowledge of.
  • Oeconomicus (The Economist) as translated by H.G. Dakyns.

Plutarch

Socrates as quoted by Plutarch

• I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
  • Note: Compare doctrine of fidelity to Athenian law in Plato's Crito.

• Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

Diogenes Laertius

Socrates as quoted in Lives of Eminent Philosophers

• I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

• Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many things I have no need of!"

• Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

• There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
  • Variant: The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

Attributed

• Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.
  • As reported by 'Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), pg. 161. However, the original source of this statement is unknown.

Misattributions

• Know thyself.
  • This statement actually predates Socrates, and was used as an Inscription at the Oracle of Delphi. It is a saying traditionally ascribed to one of the "Seven Sages of Greece", notably Solon, but accounts vary as to whom. Socrates himself is reported to have quoted it although it is very probable that Thales was in fact the one who first stated it.

• The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
  • Apparently dates from 1953: see Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service, Edited by Suzy Platt, 1989, number 195.
  • See also this discussion about the topic.
  • Actually a paraphrase of a quote from Aristophanes' Clouds, a comedic play known for its caricature of Socrates (w:The Clouds)

• Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
  • No findable citation to Socrates. First appears in this form in the 1990s, such as in the Douglas Bradley article Lighting a Flame in the Kickapoo Valley^[1]. It appears to be a variant on "The understanding is not a vessel which must be filled, but firewood, which needs to be kindled; and love of learning and love of truth are what should kindle it", which appears in early 1860s US educational books ^[2] - with equally untraceable attribution to Plutarch.

Quotes about Socrates

• This man here is so bizarre, his ways so unusual, that, search as you might, you'll never find anyone else, alive or dead, who's even remotely like him. The best you do is not to compare him to anything human, but liken him, as I do, to Silenus and the satyrs, and the same goes for his ideas and arguments.
  • Alcibiades, as quoted in Symposium by Plato

• I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
  • Steve Jobs in Newsweek (29 October 2001)

• Socrates gave a lot of advice, and he was given Hemlock to drink.
  • Rose Kennedy, in an interview with Barbara Walters, (November 1968)

• 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, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
  • John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism Ch.2

• If anyone thinks that Socrates is proven to have lied about his daimon because the jury condemned him to death when he stated that a divinity revealed to him what he should and should not do, then let him take note of two things: first, that Socrates was so far advanced in age that he would have died soon, if not then; and second, that he escaped the most bitter part of life, when all men's mental powers diminish.
  • Xenophon in Memorabilia IV. 8.1

References

1. ↑ Lighting a Flame in the Kickapoo Valley, Douglas Bradley, Wisconsin Ideas, UW System, 1994
2. ↑ For instance, p.117, The American journal of education, Volume 10, Henry Barnard, pub. F.C. Brownell, 1861 Google Books

External links

• Socrates at Washington State University
• Project Gutenberg e-texts on Socrates:
  • The Dialogues of Plato (see also Wikipedia articles on Dialogues by Plato)
  • The writings of Xenophon, such as the Memorablia and Hellenica.
  • The satirical plays by Aristophanes
  • Aristotle's writings
  • Voltaire's Socrates
  • The Second Story of Meno; a continuation of Socrates' dialogue with Meno in which the boy proves root 2 is irrational (by an anonymous author)

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