Steve Simmons > Steve's Quotes

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
― Socrates

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Socrates

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

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
― Socrates

“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
― Socrates

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
― Socrates

“I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.

From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.

We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.”
― Socrates

“Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”
― Socrates

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