Quotes · Skopia

109 quotes

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. — Socrates · 400 BC The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates · 399 BC The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention. — Socrates · 375 BC Democracy passes into despotism. — Socrates · 375 BC For our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives. — Socrates · 375 BC I know that I do not know. — Socrates · 399 BC All 44 quotes →

Sophocles21 quotes

There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than man. — Sophocles · 441 BC For God hates utterly The bray of bragging tongues. — Sophocles · 442 BC Reason is God's crowning gift to man. — Sophocles · 442 BC How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be When there's no help in truth! — Sophocles · 430 BC The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. — Sophocles · 430 BC The happiest life consists in ignorance. — Sophocles · 442 BC All 21 quotes →

Pericles10 quotes

Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous. — Pericles · 430 BC We are lovers of beauty without extravagance, and lovers of wisdom without unmanliness. Wealth is to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome. — Pericles · 430 BC Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. — Pericles · 430 BC But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it. — Pericles · 430 BC Our constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, and our public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement, not for any sectional reason but on grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public life, so we care the same spirit into our daily relations with one another... Open and friendly in our private intercourse, in our public acts we keep strictly within the control of law. We acknowledge the restraint of authority, and to the laws, more especially to those which offer protection to the oppressed and those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings admitted shame. — Pericles · 430 BC Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day, fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action... So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all memorials, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is the memorial of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. — Pericles · 430 BC All 10 quotes →

Aristophanes6 quotes

The old are in a second childhood. — Aristophanes · 423 BC Mankind, fleet of life, like tree leaves, weak creatures of clay, unsubstantial as shadows, wingless, ephemeral, wretched, mortal and dreamlike. — Aristophanes · 424 BC These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: can't live with them, or without them! — Aristophanes · 411 BC When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever. — Aristophanes · 424 BC A woman's time of opportunity is short, and if she doesn't seize it, no one wants to marry her, and she sits watching for omens. — Aristophanes · 414 BC You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding and a vulgar manner. — Aristophanes · 424 BC

Plato6 quotes

For what should a man live, if not for the pleasures of discourse? — Plato · 370 BC Friends have all things in common. — Plato · 370 BC Of all wild creatures, the child is the most intractable. — Plato · 346 BC Socrates is a wrongdoer because he corrupts the youth and does not believe in the gods the state believes in, but in other new spiritual beings. — Plato · 339 BC My child, you are still young, and time as it advances [888b] will cause you to reverse many of the opinions you now hold: so wait till then before pronouncing judgment on matters of most grave importance; and of these the gravest of all—though at present you regard it as naught—is the question of holding a right view about the gods and so living well, or the opposite. — Plato · 346 BC You cannot conceive the many without the one. — Plato · 340 BC

Menander5 quotes

This is living, not to live unto oneself alone. — Menander · 290 BC I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade. — Menander · 290 BC Whom the gods love dies young. — Menander · 290 BC Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil. — Menander · 290 BC The man who has never been flogged has never been taught. — Menander · 291 BC

Thucydides5 quotes

You know as well as we do that right, as the word goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. — Thucydides · 404 BC Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. — Thucydides · 404 BC Great is the glory of the woman who occasions the least talk among men, whether of praise or of blame. — Thucydides · 404 BC The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest. — Thucydides · 404 BC The great wish of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy, the great wish of others to save their own pocket. Slow in assembling, they devote a very small fraction of the time to the consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come of his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays. — Thucydides · 404 BC

Agathon3 quotes

For the one thing even God cannot do is change the past. — Agathon This only is denied even to God, The power to make what has been done undone. — Agathon · 350 BC One might perhaps say that this very thing is probable, that many things happen to men that are not probable. — Agathon

Demosthenes2 quotes

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. — Demosthenes · 349 BC Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states. — Demosthenes · 343 BC

Nicias2 quotes

For a city consists of men, and not of walls nor ships empty of men. — Nicias · 404 BC Who has knowledge of what is to be dreaded and what is not—the man whom I call courageous? — Nicias · 380 BC

Solon2 quotes

Old to grow, but ever learning. — Solon · 119 Many evil men are rich, and good men poor, But we shall not exchange with them our excellence for riches. — Solon · 560 BC

Themistocles2 quotes

Tuning the lyre and handling the harp are no accomplishments of mine, but rather taking in hand a city that was small and inglorious and making it glorious and great. — Themistocles · 119 He who commands the sea has command of everything. — Themistocles · 462 BC

Xenophon1 quote

The sea! the sea! — Xenophon · 370 BC

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