Socrates

“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?”

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

“Do you imagine that a state can submit and not be overthrown, in which the decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and trampled upon by individuals?”

“How many things are there which I do not want.”

“I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the world.”

“I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.”

“If all our 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.”

“Man must rise above the Earth -- to the top of the atmosphere and beyond -- for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.”

“My belief is that to have no wants is divine.”

“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.”

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.”

“Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.”

“Wisdom begins in wonder.”

“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”