Socrates

If you want to be wrong then follow the masses.

Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.

When a democratic city athirst for liberty gets bad cupbearers for its leaders and is intoxicated by drinking too deep of that unmixed wine, and then, if its so-called governors are not extremely mild and gentle with it and do not dispense the liberty unstintedly, it chastises them and accuses them of being accursed oligarchs.

But those who obey the rulers it reviles as willing slaves and men of naught, but it commends and honors in public and private rulers who resemble subjects and subjects who are like rulers. Is it not inevitable that in such a state the spirit of liberty should go to all lengths?

And so the probable outcome of too much freedom is only too much slavery in the individual and the state. Probably, then, tyranny develops out of no other constitution than democracy—from the height of liberty, I take it, the fiercest extreme of servitude.

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

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

The unexamined life is not worth living.

I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not fancy I do.

This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless.

I am very conscious that I am not wise at all.

If anyone says that he has learned anything from me... be assured that he is not telling the truth.

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.

Those who offer [wisdom] to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom.

I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy.

It is not difficult to avoid death. It is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.

A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time.

Knowledge is the only virtue, because once a man knows good from evil, nothing on earth can compel him to act against that knowledge.