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
What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?
Interpretation
What this quote means
Socrates questions the moral decline of youth and their behavior towards authority figures.
In this quote, Socrates expresses concern about the deteriorating values and behavior of young people in society. He perceives a troubling trend where youth show disrespect towards elders, disobedience towards parents, and a disregard for laws, which leads him to question the future implications of such moral decay and what it means for society as a whole.
Themes
YouthMoralsDisrespectAuthorityConcernSociety
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion on the behavior of young people at a community meeting.
More from Socrates
All quotes →The 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
Similar quotes
Let no man fear to die, we love to sleep all, and death is but the sounder sleep.
Francis BeaumontRead
Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.
Thomas SowellRead
All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
Rebecca WestRead
If you go searching for the Great Creator, you will come back empty-handed. The source of the universe is ultimately unknowable, a great invisible river flowing forever through a vast and fertile valley. Silent and uncreated, it creates all things.
LaoziRead
In my case, I think my exile saved my life, for it inexorably confirmed something which Americans appear to have great difficulty accepting. Which is, simply, this: a man is not a man until he is able and willing to accept his own vision of the world, no matter how radically this vision departs from others.
James A. BaldwinRead
All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.
Barack ObamaRead