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

"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."

"The wisest have the most authority."

"It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be."

"Ideas are the source of all things."

"If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it."

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle."

"Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class."

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

"He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it."

"If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life."

"Be kind, because everyone is having a really hard time."

"When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them."

"All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince."

"Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically."

"Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil."

"It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death."

"As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser."

"The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom."

"I would fain grow old learning many things."

"Science is nothing but perception."

"I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true."

"If you want to understand language, spend less time in the library with Plato and more time on the buses with people."

"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men."

"Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails."

"Life must be lived as play."

"There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot."

"Wealth is well known to be a great comforter."

"Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good."

"We are bound to our bodies like an oyster to its shell."

"The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things."

"They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth."

"But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best."

"He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age. But to him who is of an opposite disposition, youth and age are equally a burden."

"Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence."

"Is it not true that the clever rogue is like the runner who runs well for the first half of the course, but flags before reaching the goal: he is quick off the mark, but ends in disgrace and slinks away crestfallen and uncrowned. The crown is the prize of the really good runner who perseveres to the end."

"For good nurture and education implant good constitutions."

"Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine."

"To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed."

"He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act."

"There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet."

"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."

"One man cannot practice many arts with success."