Sokrates cytaty

„Najmądrzejszy jest, który wie, czego nie wie.”

„Nigdy nie zestarzeje się serce, które kocha.”

„Takie czasy nastały, że jak chcesz z kim mądrym pogadać, musisz rozmawiać sam ze sobą.”

„Szczęście jest przyjemnością wolną od wyrzutów sumienia.”

„Długie szaty krępują ciało, a bogactwo – duszę.”

„Wszelka dusza jest nieśmiertelna.”

„Jeśli ktoś z nas pragnie poznać coś w sposób czysty, musi się od ciała wyzwolić i samą tylko duszą oglądać rzeczywistość.”

„Głód jest najlepszym kucharzem.”

„Piękno jest jedyną rzeczą boską i widzialną jednocześnie.”

„Weź tyle, ile potrzebujesz, daj tyle, ile możesz.”

„Strzeż się ludzi, którzy są pewni tego, że mają rację.”

„Puste worki nadyma wiatr, bezmyślnych ludzi – próżność.”

„Wiem, że nic nie wiem.”

„Człowiek nie jest nigdy zły dobrowolnie.”

„Tyle tu rzeczy, których mi nie potrzeba!”

„Jeżeli język nie jest poprawny, to, co powiedziano, nie jest tym, co zamierzano powiedzieć. Jeżeli to, co powiedziano, nie jest tym, co zamierzano powiedzieć, nie zostanie zrobione to, co być powinno.”

„Tam, gdzie chodzi o to, co sprawiedliwe, piękne i dobre nie powinniśmy troszczyć się o opinie ogółu.”

„Ci, których najtrudniej jest kochać, potrzebują tego najbardziej.”

„W całym życiu szanuj prawdę tak, by twoje słowa były bardziej wiarygodne od przyrzeczeń innych.”

„Pragnie się tego, czego się nie ma, nie można przecież czegoś chcieć, kiedy się już to ma – skoro więc filozof pragnie mądrości, to nie może być mądry.”

„Kritonie, myśmy winni koguta Asklepiosowi. Oddajcież go, a nie zapomnijcie!”

„Jeśli znajdziesz dobrą żonę, będziesz szczęśliwy, jeśli złą – zostaniesz filozofem.”

„Tymczasem ja ani przedtem nie uważałem za stosowne robić niczego podłego z uwagi na niebezpieczeństwo, ani mi teraz żal, żem się w ten sposób bronił; wolę zginąć po takiej obronie, niż tamtym sposobem żyć.”

„Jak większe jest szczęście być zdrowym niż bogatym, tak mniejszym jest nieszczęściem ubóstwo niż choroba.”

„Błąd jest przywilejem filozofów, tylko głupcy nie mylą się nigdy.”

„A złota obym miał tyle, ile ani unieść, ani uciągnąć nie potrafi nikt inny, tylko ten, co zna miarę we wszystkim.”

„Wszystko w miarę.”

„Dla cierpiących najmniejsza radość jest szczęściem.”

„Wolałabyś [Ksantypo], żebym umierał z wyroku sprawiedliwego?”

„Nieprawdaż, że czasem, kiedy wiatr wieje jeden i ten sam, to jeden z nas marznie, a drugi nie? I jeden marznie lekko, a drugi mocno?”

„Ateny są jak ospały koń, a ja jak giez, który próbuje go ożywić.”

„Poznaj samego siebie.”

„Niezbadane życie nie jest warte życia.”

„Zimą potrzebne jest ciepłe okrycie, w starości - brak zmartwień.”

„Nie może człowiek poddawać się i ulegać pragnieniom i pożądaniom ciała, ale zawsze należy postępować zgodnie z rozumem, który jest najlepszym doradcą.”

„Kto będzie miał dobrą żonę, ten będzie szczęśliwy, kto będzie miał złą, zostanie filozofem.”

„Nikogo i niczego nie umiem słuchać jak tylko argumentu, który mi się po rozwadze wyda najstosowniejszy.”

„Drzewa na wsi niczego mnie nie nauczą.”

„Wypoczynek to największe z dóbr.”

„Bóg z maszyny (teatralnej).”

„Bać się śmierci jest tym samym, co mieć się za mądrego, nim nie będąc.”

„Nie nauczą mnie niczego kwiatki, czy drzewa, lecz tylko drugi człowiek.”

„Sprawiedliwość jest odmianą mądrości.”

„Znajdujesz to, czego szukasz, umyka ci to, co zaniedbujesz.”

„Człowiek nie żyje, aby jadł, ale je, aby żył.”

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

“As there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises from too great confidence of inexperience; you trust a man and think him altogether true and good and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially within the circle of his most trusted friends, as he deems them, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all. …The reason is that a man, having to deal with other men, has no knowledge of them; for if he had knowledge he would have known the true state of the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them.”

“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

“But if I wanted shoes, and you had given me a piece of leather to make myself shoes, I should be laughed at if I took it.”

“[H]e was nearest to the gods in that he had the fewest wants.”

“If, I say now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods… then I would be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. …this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men — that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”

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

“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”

“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.”

“If there is anything beautiful other than absolute beauty, that can only be beautiful as far as it partakes of absolute beauty—and this I should say of everything. …by beauty all things become beautiful. …by greatness only great things become great and greater and greater, and by smallness the less becomes less.”

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

“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.”

“In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And then the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we shall be pure and hold converse with othe pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere; and this is surely the light of truth. For no impure thing is allowed to approach the pure. These are the sort of words, Simmias, which the true lovers of wisdom cannot help saying to one another, and thinking.”

“When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O 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.”

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

“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?”

“For after death, as they say, the genius of each individual, to whom he belonged in life, leads him to a certain place in which the dead are gathered together for judgment, whence they go into the world below, following the guide who is appointed to conduct them from this world to the other; and when they have there received their due and remained their time, another guide brings them back again after many revolutions of ages.”

“It is the example of the rider who wishes to become an expert horseman: "None of your soft-mouthed, docile animals for me," he says; "the horse for me to own must show some spirit" in the belief, no doubt, if he can manage such an animal, it will be easy enough to deal with every other horse besides. And that is just my case. I wish to deal with human beings, to associate with man in general; hence my choice of wife. I know full well, if I can tolerate her spirit, I can with ease attach myself to every human being else.”

“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?”

“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.”

“I have had no regular disciples: but if anyone likes to come and hear me while I am pursuing my mission, whether he be young or old, he may freely come. Nor do I converse with those who pay only, and not with those who do not pay; but anyone, whether he be rich or poor, may ask and answer me and listen to my words; and whether he turns out to be a bad man or a good one, that cannot be justly laid to my charge, as I never taught him anything. And if anyone says that he has ever learned or heard anything from me in private which all the world has not heard, I should like you to know that he is speaking an untruth.”

“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.”

“Suppose that there are two sorts of existences, one seen, and the other unseen. …The seen is the changing, and the unseen is the unchanging. …And further, is not one part of us body, and the rest of us soul? …Then the soul is more like to the unseen, and the body to the seen? …the soul is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard when under their influence?”

“And I prophesy to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my death punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be as you suppose: far otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they will be more severe with you, and you will be more offended at them. For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censoring your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.”

“I am confident in the belief that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the evil.”

“Ηe knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance.”

“I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet in law ought any man 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, if a man is willing to say or do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.”

“It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the way in which the mind acts, and not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking. I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which the many, feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking and misnaming.”

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