Socrates

"I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean."

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

"Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?"

"The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift."

"I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think"

"Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant."

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

"If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman."

"The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift."

"Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant."

"Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued."

"I only know that I know nothing"

"For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles."

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

"Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."

"God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods..."

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise."

"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for."

"The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms."