Socrates

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

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

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 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.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

A crank is someone with a new idea – until it catches on.

The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.

Nothing does more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?

A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.