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I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
by Socrates

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

Related topics: Wisdom

He is richest who is content with the least,
for content is the wealth of nature.
- Socrates

Know thyself.
- Socrates (inscribed on the ancient Greek temple at Delphi)

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
- Socrates

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

He is richest who is content with the least.
- Socrates

The envious person grows lean
with the fatness of their neighbor.
- Socrates

I cannot teach anybody anything.
I can only make them think.
- Socrates

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
- Socrates

Wisdom begins in wonder.
- Socrates

Worthless people live only to eat and drink;
people of worth eat and drink only to live.
- Socrates

Ordinary people seem not to realize
that those who really apply themselves
in the right way to philosophy
are directly and of their own accord
preparing themselves for dying and death.
- Socrates

Be as you wish to seem.
- Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates

A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

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

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

The shortest and surest way to
live with honor in the world,
is to be in reality
what we would appear to be.
- Socrates

Not life, but good life,
is to be chiefly valued.
- Socrates

I know that I am intelligent,
because I know that I know nothing.
- Socrates

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor
to be what you desire to appear.
- Socrates

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
- Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.
- Socrates

Let him that would move the world first move himself.
- Socrates

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
- Socrates

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
- Socrates

One who is injured ought not to return the injury,
for on no account can it be right to do an injustice;
and it is not right to return an injury,
or to do evil to any man,
however much we have suffered from him.
- Socrates

An honest man is always a child.
- Socrates

Be slow to fall into friendship;
but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
- Socrates

He is a man of courage who does not run away,
but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
- Socrates

If a man is proud of his wealth,
he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
- Socrates

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
- Socrates

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
- Socrates

By all means marry.
If you get a good wife, you'll be happy.
If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher
and that is a good thing for any man.
- Socrates

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
- Socrates

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings,
so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
- Socrates

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

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man
take which course he will,
he will be sure to repent.
- Socrates

All men's souls are immortal,
but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.
- Socrates

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap
whence everyone must take an equal portion,
most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
- Socrates

Envy is the ulcer of the soul.
- Socrates

The end of life is to be like God,
and the soul following God will be like Him.
- Socrates

Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.
- Socrates

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

My advice to you is get married:
if you find a good wife you'll be happy;
if not, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.
- Socrates

Where there is reverence there is fear,
but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear,
because fear presumably has a wider
extension than reverence.
- Socrates

Beauty is the bait which with delight
allures man to enlarge his kind.
- Socrates

I only wish that ordinary people
had an unlimited capacity for doing harm;
then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
- Socrates

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

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom.
It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest
might weaken and the wisest might err.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,
and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
- Thomas Jefferson

Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
- Mark Twain

The man who is successful is the man who is useful.
- Bourke Cockran

Man plans, God laughs
- Yiddish Proverb

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
- B. C. Forbes

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Any man who reads too much
and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein

The wise man looks back into the past,
and does not grieve over what is far off,
nor rejoice over what is near;
for he knows that time is without end.
- Lao Tzu

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.
- Yiddish Proverb

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson

A man is a success if he gets up in
the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between he does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie