Quotes by Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.
(in Plato, Dialogues, Apology)

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.
(quoted by Plato, 'The Death of Socrates')

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.
(Quoted in: Plato's Apology, sct. 42a. Last words of his speech to the court following the sentence of death imposed on him by the Athenians.)

Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.

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

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.