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

"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?"

"The misuse of language induces evil in the soul"

"I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others."

"I did not care for the things that most people care about– making money, having a comfortable home, high military or civil rank, and all the other activities, political appointments, secret societies, party organizations, which go on in our city . . . I set myself to do you– each one of you, individually and in private– what I hold to be the greatest possible service. I tried to persuade each one of you to concern himself less with what he has than with what he is, so as to render himself as excellent and as rational as possible."

"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."

"The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift."

"No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable."

"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."

"And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls."

"The misuse of language induces evil in the soul."

"Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers."

"Virtue does not come from wealth, but ... wealth, and every other good thing which men have comes from virtue."

"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."

"Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty."

"Do not trouble about those who practice philosophy, whether they are good or bad; but examine the thing itself well and carefully. And if philosophy appears a bad thing to you, turn every man from it, not only your sons; but if it appears to you such as I think it to be, take courage, pursue it, and practice it, as the saying is, 'both you and your house."

"Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers."

"Envy is the ulcer of the soul."

"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."

"Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing."