30 Life Lessons From 10 Ancient Greek Philosophers, With Sources Checked

Facebook ↗WhatsApp ↗
0 0 Edit this post
Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context

From Ethics to Happiness. From Democracy to Music, Arts and Philosophy. From Logic to Science. Ancient Greeks thought, discussed and wrote about a lot of our modern civilizations' ideas and problems which seem to be really important even after 2,500 years! Below, you can read quotes about the meaning and the essence of the words knowledge and wisdom, an understanding of what intelligence is, the presentation of love and friendship, the definition of happiness and the importance of being grateful. Furthermore, you will also read about politics, the issue of poverty and more philosophical ideas and thoughts.

Here are 30 precious diachronic life lessons which will make you think, become more self-aware and help you become a more conscious being. Enjoy the list, share and add your ideas in the comment section.

1) Pythagoras (570-495 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Pythagoras

“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Pythagoras)

“Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Pythagoras)

“If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Pythagoras)

2) Democritus (c. 460-370 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Democritus

“Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Democritus)

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” (a modern paraphrase of the report in Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers IX.44: “The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist” (Wikiquote, Democritus))

“Many much-learned men have no intelligence.” — Democritus, fragment B 64 (Diels–Kranz), preserved by Stobaeus (Wikiquote, Democritus)

3) Socrates (c. 469-399 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Socrates

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” (a modern condensation: Diogenes Laërtius, Lives II.32, reports Socrates saying he knew nothing except the fact of his ignorance (Wikiquote, Socrates))

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Plato, Apology 38a (Wikipedia)

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Socrates)

4) Plato (428/427–348/347 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Plato

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” (Not Plato: Quote Investigator traces it to the Scottish writer Ian Maclaren, around 1897, as “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle”.)

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces the first two sentences to Plato; the last echoes his Symposium 196e, “once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet” (Wikiquote, Plato))

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Plato)

5) Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Aristotle

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” (A modern misreading: in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle says it is the mark of an educated person to look for the degree of precision each subject allows; the popular wording is traced to Lowell Bennion.)

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

6) Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412-323 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Diogenes of Sinope

“It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.” (a saying reported in the ancient collections of Diogenes Laërtius and Stobaeus (Wikiquote, Diogenes of Sinope))

“It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Diogenes in this wording)

“Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.” (preserved in the anthology of Stobaeus (Wikiquote, Diogenes of Sinope))

7) Epicurus (c. 341-270 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Epicurus

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”

“Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.”

8) Heraclitus (535-475 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Heraclitus

“Time is a game played beautifully by children.” (a loose rendering of the fragment “Time (Aion) is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child’s” (Wikipedia, Heraclitus))

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” (a later paraphrase: Plutarch gives “It is not possible to step into the same river twice”, and the fragment usually considered genuine reads “On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow” (Wikipedia, Heraclitus))

“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Heraclitus, and it is not among his surviving fragments; it reads as a modern saying)

9) Pericles (c. 495-429 BCE)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Pericles

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. ” (No ancient source: the line has been credited to Pericles only since the late 1990s and appears to be modern.)

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved on stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

“Those who can truly be accounted brave are those who best know the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then go out, undeterred, to meet what is to come.”

10) Epictetus (c. 55—135 AD)

Ancient Greek Philosophy Quotes: Ideas to Read in Context - Epictetus

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion 33, where Carter’s translation reads “He does not know my other faults, else he would not have mentioned only these” (Enchiridion, trans. Elizabeth Carter, MIT Internet Classics Archive)

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Epictetus in this wording)

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.” (attribution unconfirmed: no reliable source traces this to Epictetus)

How reliable are these attributions?

Ancient sayings travel a long way before they reach a quotation list. Several lines above are well grounded: Epicurus’s remark that death is nothing to us comes from his Letter to Menoeceus, and the friend as “a single soul dwelling in two bodies” is reported of Aristotle by the ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius. Others are not ancient at all. This review found that the “be kind” line credited to Plato dates from the 1890s, the “educated mind” line is a modern misreading of Aristotle, and the politics line credited to Pericles appears only in the late 1990s. The remaining quotations were not individually traced for this update; treat them as attributed, and look for the dialogue, fragment or ancient report behind a line before quoting it as the philosopher’s own words.

Put the argument beside the quotation

A short maxim often removes the disagreement that made a philosophical argument interesting. Try rewriting one selected saying as a question, then offering a reasonable objection to it. Does the advice concern friendship, public duty or personal restraint? Those situations may call for different answers. Keep the ancient thinker, the surviving text and the modern English translation separate when tracing a quotation's origin.

Read a maxim as the beginning of an argument

A compact philosophical saying is easy to remember because it leaves things out. The missing parts may include a definition, an objection or a distinction between circumstances. Restoring those questions is a more useful exercise than trying to make every sentence into a universal law. Begin with a line you like and ask what would need to be true for its advice to help.

Suppose the selected saying praises restraint. Restraint about what, and toward whom? Holding back an impatient reply differs from withholding information someone needs. If the line praises courage, ask how courage is distinguished from carelessness. These examples do not establish the original meaning of any one quotation. They show why philosophical words become clearer when connected to particular choices.

A second exercise is to compare two sayings that seem to disagree. One may encourage speaking plainly, while another may value silence. Instead of choosing the more attractive sentence, describe a situation in which each would be reasonable. The apparent contradiction can reveal that the advice addresses different problems. It can also reveal a genuine disagreement worth exploring in the original works.

Authorship creates another layer. A historical thinker, a speaker in a dialogue and the author of the surviving text are not automatically the same person. Modern translations add choices about tone and vocabulary. A saying passed from one website to another can lose all of those distinctions while retaining a famous name. When a source cannot be located, acknowledge the uncertainty rather than using the person's reputation as proof.

For your own notes, keep four small fields beside a quotation: the wording, the attributed thinker, the source you actually consulted and the question it raises. Leave an empty source field visibly empty until you can fill it. This simple record prevents an attractive line from becoming more certain each time it is copied.

The reward is a different kind of collection. Instead of thirty instructions competing for your agreement, the page becomes thirty possible openings into thought. Some may lead to an ancient text, some to a disagreement with a modern paraphrase, and some to a better question about your own choices. Each route offers more than memorizing the sentence alone.

Explore the related article: The Three Filters: A Story Attributed to Socrates.

More from the archive:

Labels:

Facebook ↗WhatsApp ↗

COMMENTS

BLOGGER