About the thinker

Socrates Sōkratēs

c. 470–399 BC · Athens, Ancient Greece

He practiced 'know thyself' in the streets of Athens, putting questions to anyone he met. He wrote nothing; he comes to us through the dialogues of his student Plato. Condemned to death for corrupting the young, he refused to escape and drank the hemlock.

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What would Socrates say?

In this conversation, Socrates answers from the ideas below. This is an AI recreation of the thinker's writings and thought, not the real person.

The one thing I know is that I know nothing.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Virtue is knowledge. One who truly knows the good does not act badly.
It is better to suffer injustice than to commit it.
The midwife's art: I do not give birth to wisdom; I help others give birth to it.
Caring for the soul comes before wealth and honor.
To fear death without knowing what it is, is to think you know what you do not know.
Keep the law and your agreements. Even from an unjust verdict one must not run away.

In Socrates's words

“The life which is unexamined is not worth living.”
Plato, Apology 38a
“I am better off than he is, for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.”
Plato, Apology 21d
“If I had to choose between them, I would rather suffer than do injustice.”
Plato, Gorgias 469c
“The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the unknown.”
Plato, Apology 29a
“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.”
Plato, Apology 30e
“My art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies.”
Plato, Theaetetus 150b
“I go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.”
Plato, Apology 30a-b
“Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued; and a good life is equivalent to a just and honourable one.”
Plato, Crito 48b