Marcus > Marcus's Quotes

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”
― Laurence J. Peter

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
― Socrates

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
― Socrates

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
― Socrates

“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
― Socrates

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
― Socrates

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
― Socrates

“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”
― Socrates

“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
― Socrates

“Know thyself.”
― Socrates

“Let him who would move the world first move himself.”
― Socrates

“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates

“Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
― Socrates

“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. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.

We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.”
― Socrates

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Socrates

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
― Socrates

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

“I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
― Herbert Bayard Swope

“Don't be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.