Socrates

Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

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

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

By his father he is English, by his mother he is Americanto my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Men are what their mothers made them.

If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.

Always play like an underdog.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

When a man is just and firm in his purpose, the citizens burning to approve a wrong or the frowning looks of a tyrant. Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind. Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic, nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove: Should the heavens crack and tumble down, as the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.

He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be… those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes… those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober — minded men.