Socrates is perhaps history’s most renowned philosopher, and to some, he’s the father of modern psychotherapy.
Socratic philosophy was one of practicality. He would wander the streets of Athens talking to the people, asking questions, and challenging the beliefs they held about themselves, other people, and the wider world around them.
He did so because he believed that we are all responsible for looking after the state of our soul, or mind. It is up to each individual to make sure his mental health is looked after and cared for. In the same way, we look after our bodies or property.
Socrates saw that many men and women gave priority to their reputation, wealth, property, and status, rather than caring first for the soul. As a result, he challenged the people of Athens, promoting his philosophy and the importance of virtue over vice, character over wealth, and above all, the question of one’s beliefs.
Here are some of his greatest quotes:
Socrates Quotes:
It would be better for me that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.
The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.
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 judgement which aspires after excellence.
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.
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?
Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road.
I honour 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 honour and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul? Are you not ashamed of these? 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.
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care: I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with overvaluing the greater, and undervaluing the less.
The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
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 organisations, 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.
Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.
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 affected 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.
understanding a question is half an answer
Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, “How many things I have no need of!”
When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, my friends, to punish them; and I would have you to trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing — then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.
I cannot teach anybody anything I can only make them think
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.
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.
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
They who have a care of their souls, and do not merely live in the fashions of the body, say farewell to all this; they will not walk in the ways of the blind: and when philosophy offers them purification and release from evil, they feel that they ought not resist her influence, and to her they incline, and whither she leads they follow her.
