A system of morality that is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception that has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
SocratesRead
Admitting one's ignorance is the first step in acquiring knowledge.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Acknowledging what you don't know is essential for learning and growth.
This quote by Socrates emphasizes the importance of recognizing one's own limitations in knowledge. Only by admitting ignorance can a person begin to seek truth and understanding, thereby paving the way to greater wisdom and learning.
Themes
IgnoranceKnowledgeLearningAwarenessWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
In a classroom setting, a teacher might use this quote to encourage students to ask questions and seek help.
More from Socrates
All quotes βThe poets are only the interpreters of the gods.
SocratesRead
I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
SocratesRead
The unexamined life is not worth living.
SocratesRead
When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery.
SocratesRead
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued." "It is not living that matters, but living rightly. The unexamined life is not worth living.
SocratesRead
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You are who you associate with. Look around at your five closest friends and that's who you are. If you don't want to be that person, you know what you gotta do.
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What we know matters but who we are matters more.
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When the heart is right, the mind and the body will follow.
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A person who has experienced something is almost always far more expert on it than are the experts.
Gloria SteinemRead
Feeling will get you closer to the truth of who you are than thinking. I cannot tell you anything that deep within you don't already know. When you have reached a certain stage of inner connectedness, you recognize the truth when you hear it. If you haven't reached that stage yet, the practice of body awareness will bring about the deepening that is necessary.
Eckhart TolleRead
Now in reality, the world has paid too great a compliment to critics, and has imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.
Henry FieldingRead