Socrates Wisdom Quotes

#1. There you have Socrates' wisdom; [b] he himself isn't willing to teach, but he goes around learning from others and isn't even grateful to them.

Plato

#2. The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.

Plato

#3. I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Socrates

#4. Are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?

Socrates

#5. Wisdom adorneth riches and casteth a shadow over poverty.

Socrates

#6. Socrates ... brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where she was wasting her time, and restored her to man ... It is impossible to go back further and lower. He did a great favor to human nature by showing how much it can do by itself.

Michel De Montaigne

#7. The Spirit is neither good nor bad, it runs where the wild heart leads" "Wisdom begins in wonder.

Socrates

#8. Behold, he said, the wisdom of Socrates; he refuses to teach himself, and goes about learning of others, to whom he never even says Thank you.

Plato

#9. Wisdom is knowing how little we know.

Socrates

#10. Wisdom is knowing when you don't know

Socrates

#11. In an ideal world, we'd all transform ourselves into experts and make judgments based on extensive knowledge. Given that this will never happen, our next best option is to emulate the wisdom of Socrates: We become wiser when we acknowledge our ignorance.

Joshua Greene

#12. People learn more on their own rather than being force fed.

Socrates

#13. Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?

Socrates

#14. The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

Socrates

#15. One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.

Socrates

#16. True wisdom lies in one's confession about the limits of one's knowledge.

Socrates

#17. The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Socrates

#18. All of the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word.

Socrates

#19. True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Socrates

#20. I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said
and did not say.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#21. True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Socrates

#22. If you live as if you know nothing you offer yourself the opportunity to learn everything.

Kay Whitley

#23. Wisdom is knowing you know nothing

Socrates

#24. Wonder is the beginning of all wisdom.

Socrates

#25. That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless

Plato

#26. The ancient Oracle said that I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.

Socrates

#27. The bad one is that way because of the ignorance, therefore he can be healed with wisdom.

Socrates

#28. When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.

Socrates

#29. Knowing thyself is the height of wisdom.

Socrates

#30. I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.

Plato

#31. Aren't you ashamed to be concerned so much about making all the money you can and advancing your reputation and prestige, while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your souls you have no thought or car?

Socrates

#32. The highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on record that Shakespeare and Socrates were the most festive companions.

Thomas Love Peacock

#33. The true Wisdom is in recognizing our own ignorance.

Socrates

#34. Socrates may have thought himself to be the wisest in Athens, but King Solomon was the wisest in the world. With all his philosophy Socrates died a poor man, and with all his wisdom King Solomon died a rich man.

Matshona Dhliwayo

#35. But now the giant heads of Plato and Socrates, each with an expression of penetrating wisdom carved on his white features, surveyed the river and the melon beds beyond.

J.G. Farrell

#36. Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

#37. Wisdom begins in wonder.

Socrates

#38. Angels come in many forms, but they always bring the same message
wisdom.

Shannon L. Alder

#39. Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?

Socrates

#40. To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

#41. I have not sought during my life to amass wealth and to adorn my body, but I have sought to adorn my soul with the jewels of wisdom, patience, and above all with a love of liberty.

Socrates

#42. The definition of terms is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

#43. By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.

Socrates

#44. The tongue of a fool is the key of his counsel, which, in a wise man, wisdom hath in keeping.

Socrates

#45. Not by wisdom do they [poets] make what they compose, but by a gift of nature and an inspiration similar to that of the diviners and the oracles.

Socrates

#46. John Adams was a farmer, Abraham Lincoln a small town lawyer. Plato and Socrates were teachers. Jesus was a carpenter. To equate wisdom and judgement with occupation is at best insulting.

Mark Sheppard

#47. We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.

Robert Wilson Lynd

#48. ...[R]eal wisdom is the property of God, and... human wisdom has little or no value.

Socrates

#49. The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

#50. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

#51. I only know that I know nothing

Socrates

#52. Maybe that's what the quasars that stand sentinel at the end of the universe are all about - they are the spots where people like Socrates and Christ dug through; they are windows into bright and terrible wisdom. They are warnings.

Whitley Strieber

#53. Wisdom may begin in wonder, however, it inevitability ends in righteousness (Socrates)."

~R. Alan Woods [2013]

R. Alan Woods

#54. Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest
amount of money and honour and reputation,
and caring so little about wisdom and
truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?

Socrates

#55. Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Socrates

#56. One 'beautiful-mind' indeed weighs heavy over thousand creations of nature
and that is why from Socrates to Kabir, all hold such great importance.

Deep Trivedi