Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

— Socrates

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

Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously to answer wisely to consider soberly and to decide impartially.

— Socrates

...[F]room me you shall hear the whole truth; not, I can assure you, gentlemen, in flowery language... decked out with fine words and phrases; no, what you will hear will be a straightforward speech in the first words that occur to me, confident as I am in the justice of my cause; and I do not want any of you to expect anything different.

— Socrates

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love.

— Socrates

God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them, he is conversing with us.

— Socrates

God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods...

— Socrates

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

— Socrates

He is not only idle who does nothing but he is idle who might be better employed.

— Socrates

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

— Socrates