The great Greek philosopher Socrates believed that the wise person would instinctively lead a frugal life.
He himself would not even wear shoes; yet he constantly fell under the spell of the marketplace and would go there often to look at the wares on display.
When one of his friends asked why, Socrates said, “I love to go there and discover how many things I am perfectly happy without.”
Image: A 2004 postage stamp on Socrates from Bequia, an island in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the eastern Caribbean, courtesy www.philatelia.net.
Socrates (c. 470–399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem.
Quotes from Socrates:
Although Socrates did not write anything himself, he lives on through his quotes and the teachings of his disciples. Here are some quotes from Socrates:
- “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”
- “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
- “In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.”
- “Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.”
- “Nothing is to be preferred before justice.”
- “I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”
- “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”
- “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
- “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
- “Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.”
- “Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.”
- “Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”
- “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
- “Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
- “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.”
- “Be the kind of person that you want people to think you are.”
Read more about Socrates and his disciples, Plato and Aristotle, at https://wellsprings.in/the-greek-philosophical-trinity/