Socratic Method Quotes

A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.

The first beginnings of wisdom...is to ask questions but never to answer any.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

To philosophize is to doubt.

Philosophy is problem-solving. There's a philosophical problem, and then you try to solve it by approaching it from different angles and seeing what way works. That's what comedy is: you have a topic and you try to just hit it as many different ways as you can.

The true teachers are those who help us think for ourselves.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

I always say I have a Socratic approach to most things that I do. I pummel people with questions, because I need to know what they're thinking, what they're trying to achieve, what they believe the final outcome is going to be.

The essence of education is not to transfer knowledge; it is to guide the learning process, to put responsibility for study in the student's own hands...[and] place people on their own path of discovery and invention.

Socrates... Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'd Wisest of men.

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.--What was that god thinking who counseled, "Know thyself!" Did he perhaps mean,"Cease to concern yourself! Become objective!"--And Socrates?--And "scientific men"?

I have a very Socratic approach - I pummel the designers with questions, so when I get them to step back from the work and look at it with me, they'll eventually see what I see, coming to it fresh and unencumbered. That's always very gratifying because they feel a responsibility and an ownership of a solution.

Why do analysts always answer a question with a question?

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said--and did not say.

Your questions are false if you already know the answer.

Next, to make them expert in the usefullest points of grammar; and withal to season them and win them early to the love of virtue and true labour, ere any flattering seducement or vain principle seize them wandering, some easy and delightful book of education would be read to them; whereof the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other Socratic discourses.

Plato was a bore.

I pretend not to teach, but to inquire.

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

Socrates didn't care to visit the theater, as a rule, except when the plays of Euripides (which some think, he himself had helped to compose), were performed.

That's something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.

I would never dream of telling people how to dress. but I do say to them, however you are dressing, accept responsibility for it. And also, unless asked, I don't judge. And if asked to judge - I would approach it socratically, I would approach it with questions.

Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?