QUOTES

 This week we'll explore the ancient world, with the words of  Socrates, the Greek philosopher who lived about 400 BC.  He is known as the founder of Western Philosophy, including moral and ethical traditions.  Socrates left little or nothing that he had written.  We only have the quotations attributed to him by his students; primarily Plato who wrote of him extensively.  Interesting that he embraced Christian philosophy before Christ was born.

"In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure, the other, an acquired judgement which aspires after excellence."

"Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road."

"I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess wisdom which I find wanting in others; but the truth is, Oh Men of Athens, that God only is wise; ..."

"Someone will say:  And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end?    To him I may fairly answer:  There you are mistaken.  A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying;  he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or bad ..."

"An unexamined life is not worth living."

"I am confident in the belief that there truly is such a thing as living again and that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the evil."  

"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die and you to live.  Which is the better - God only knows."