#socrates

Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do. ↗

— Lydia M. Child

#attendant #being #does #every #human

If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all. ↗

— Socrates

#saddler #socrates #tame #horses

... a man doesn't like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn't know anything. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#dark-humor #ego #egotism #egotist #funny

For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles. ↗

— Socrates

#poet #socrates #inspirational

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well? ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#life #meaning-of-life #plato #socrates #unexamined-life

Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, Socrates considered the government to be an aristocracy. ↗

— Xenophon

#appointed #aristocracy #complied #considered #government

I "love" reading. It makes me feel like I am swallowing up Christ, Homer, Confucius, Newton, Franklin, Socrates, Caesar, and the whole world into one gigantic invincible Sir Moffat. Mine is creative reading. I read building empires in mind. I pray I won't read and read and forget to marry. ↗

— Moffat Machingura

#caeser #christ #christianity #confucius #consume

Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy? ↗

— Allan Bloom

#become #did #easy #every #high-school

Why should we place Christ at the top and summit of the human race? Was he kinder, more forgiving, more self-sacrificing than Buddha? Was he wiser, did he meet death with more perfect calmness, than Socrates? Was he more patient, more charitable, than Epictetus? Was he a greater philosopher, a deeper thinker, than Epicurus? In what respect was he the superior of Zoroaster? Was he gentler than Lao-tsze, more universal than Confucius? Were his ideas of human rights and duties superior to those of Zeno? Did he express grander truths than Cicero? Was his mind subtler than Spinoza’s? Was his brain equal to Kepler’s or Newton’s? Was he grander in death – a sublimer martyr than Bruno? Was he in intelligence, in the force and beauty of expression, in breadth and scope of thought, in wealth of illustration, in aptness of comparison, in knowledge of the human brain and heart, of all passions, hopes and fears, the equal of Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race? They found that Christ was a new name for an old biography; that he was not a life, but a legend; not a man, but a myth. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#bruno #buddha #cicero #kindness #patience

To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know. No one knows with regard to death wheather it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to man; but people dread it as though they were certain it is the greatest evil." -The Last Days of Socrates ↗

— Plato

#death